New Mod Heroes of Might and Magic 3 Babies!
 

The mod can be downloaded here!

What if you and the various wives in King's Bounty: The Legend created the Heroes of Might and Magic 3?

That is the premise of a new mod that I'm working on that I'm classing more as a micro / mini expansion pack for King's Bounty: The Legend.

The mod is currently in the alpha stage and I am in the quality assurance phase of the project.

Nonetheless, the mod is sufficiently stable to play a game all the way through and nearing a beta release!

If you are interested in play testing this mod / mini / micro expansion and providing feedback on your experience, then P.M. me with your email address and I will email you the pertinent files.

Note that due to the state of the project, files are still being modified and changed regularly as the quality assurance phase finds and fixes errors that I've made; however, every change has been tested at least once and so I'm hoping to cycle through the code and check more permutations for errors / issues that are currently unknown to me.

Here is the link to the YouTube video: http://youtu.be/JE0VbSnfYkM

Please watch and provide comments!

I've spent over a year working on this project in my free time after working long days at work and it is now time for people to start playing it and provide me feedback. I'm very proud of the work I've done and it will revolutionize how you play the game!

More information to follow shortly!

Matt

P.S. I'm not affiliated in any way with 1CC or Katauri Interactive and I'm hoping to create some modding guides in the future once I finish this project from everything I've learned during this process.

Great job man. It a big change, and a lott of work to make all this in game :-)
I like your idea for spell moding, and partial skill bonuses for units (like in AP neatness give bonus only for mechanic and no other unit :-( , bad idea developers ). Now demons dont have any bonus in all skill from any hero class, elves almost the same no bonuses ecsept quick draw for archers.
I mainly play CW now, but check forum for other KB games and find jewel from time to time, like your mod. I would like to check it if possible to see how you changed hero skill files and spells to try to transfer it to AP/CW.
Couple questions : why not edit all spirit skills (not massive changes, but just to add something new)?
did you add/change any items here ? , and how did you add stats bonus to some spells (like phoenix summon from skill) ?
If i earn any gold from moding i make for AP/CW, i`ll send you % from it :-D
W8ing for your mod to see what else you managed (asmirhetf@yahoo.com).
Keep up with great ideas man :-)

You're reading my mind!
 

Thanks! It has been a lot of work, but very rewarding at the same time!

You're reading my mind about AP/CW. The idea was to release the mod on The Legend first, since I think it is superior to AP/CW in the spirit area (but AP/CW superior in other areas) and then translate the mod to AP/CW.

The mod will be called Tomes of Heroes of Might and Magic 3 and instead of the HOMM3 heroes being babies, they'll be tomes (or books) that you can equip on your hero. The same system will be used to update those expansion packs eventually, but it takes time!

As far as the spirit abilities are concerned, I love the spirit abilities in The Legend, but this is where I think the developers failed in AP/CW as all the pet dragons have the same abilities. Once again, you're reading my mind, but the idea would be to look at the AP/CW spirit abilities and then take the 9 individual abilities and have 3-6 be common between the similar pet dragons and then add many new abilities to give that pet dragon a personality - just like I feel the spirits in The Legend have. I'm not even sure if it's doable, but that was one of my ideas.

As far as items are concerned, the new HOMM3 babies count as items (163 new babies + 2 new wives), but I did not add any new items since I felt that it had already been done with the Gift Bag and AP/CW.

Give me a bit of time (should be done today) to put together a little README.TXT file for my mod and then I'll email it to you so that you can check it out. I think you'll really enjoy the challenge of playing - especially the limitations to Mana / Rage gain and the new impossible difficulty bonuses! Also I have no problem if you want to implement anything I've done in AP/CW (or even TL for that matter) - just give me credit. I'll eventually get to transferring this mod to AP/CW, but that is still quite a bit on the horizon right now!

:)

Wow, fantastic work, Matt! These are some great ideas to spice things up, and hopefully increase the challenge. I haven't played HOMM3, so I'm unfamiliar with that portion, but I can't say I disagree with any of the changes I could see in the YouTube video. The wives, childrens, and Phoenix summons were in desperate need of revision.

I'm definitely going give your mod a try--I'm currently in the middle of my self-modded all Dwarf game--and will let you know when I get to it. This sounds like it will add a lot of replay to KBtL.

(Unfortunately, I can't read the in-game screens on the YouTube video due to my monitor's limitations, so I can't comment on them yet, but will check it out again on a different monitor.)

EDIT: OK, I've seen the trailer on a different monitor now. It sounds very interesting, and will definitely make the game a serious challenge with enemy heroes regaining mana, for instance. How did you come up with the numbers for the changes you made, for example: the huge increase in mana cost for the Helplessness spell? And have you done much checking for game balance, yet?

Rationale to changes mentioned
 

With respect to a lot of the changes I made, I used a formulaic approach to the value adjustments.

For example, if any spell was mass at level 3 and the only difference between its level 2 and level 3 values were mass, then I simply multiplied the mana cost by 5 (assuming it could be cast on 5 units simultaneously). This way, all the spells that I made mass (list coming shortly) are essentially automatically balanced if I get the mana cost for level 2 right.

I also used a formulaic approach for computing the mana cost for each spell level based on a formula that compared the increase in spell values from level 1 to level 2 and then applied the average increase to the mana cost. This makes the spell mana cost parameter driven which aids in balancing out the costs.

The only issue is then whether the level 1 values are consistent. This is the subjective part here and may be a part that needs some tweaking based on feedback, but I think I got the "feel" of most spell's level 1 mana cost about right and therefore the level 2 and 3 values "feel" right to me since they are all driven. I still have a favored spell's list so I'm biased by that and so could use feedback on spells that I don't use as often. Time will tell.

I essentially used this same formulaic approach for the skill tree where I compared the level 1 values to level 2 and 3. So for example if I had a skill that gave +5%, +15%, and +30% to a value, then I could simply decide what I wanted the runes to be for level 1, and then level 2 would use twice as many runes (15-5 = +10 - twice as much as +5) and then level 3 would be the sum of the rune cost for level 1 and level 2 (levels 1 and 2 brought you to +15 so spend the same amount for another +15). Once again if a skill had more than one value, then I averaged the increases to get an estimate. I used a master skill list rune cost and compared it to the number of runes you could get via level up to determine if the level 1 skill runes needed to change. Once again, somewhat subjective, but I had the total rune count to aid me with reducing / increasing the level 1 skill value and then the level 2 and 3 runes were automatically computed.

With respect to the additional values that some skils have, I used (I think it was) Razorflame's original post plus people's comments (along with my own opinion) to give weak skills more bonuses to make them better. Now I feel most skills are pretty useful especially with respect to those skills in your hero's class skill tree.

By the way, for those who played my Emperor of the Fading Suns Hyperion mod back in the day, I used this same formulaic approach to design units that were based on their resource inputs. This worked incredibly well for designing well-balanced units and I received a tremendous amount of positive feedback to how good the mod was because of this methodology.

So I approached this mod with the same mindset and I think it has worked incredibly well so far. Time will tell, and certainly I only have a sample of 1 right now and so will rely on feedback to aid with setting up the initial conditions, but I can tell you that I'm having more fun playing this instead of Armored Princess and Crossworlds, which I will hopefully get to modding after I'm done with this mod.

For spirit abilities, I used another set of formulas to aid in setting the power, rage, etc. values. Single-target abilities grow by a factor of 100%, while multi-target, and all-target attacks grow by a formula based on level (which are more percentage based on the level 1 damage than the current level damage). The idea here was that Single-target abilities would do the most damage since they targeted a single unit, then multi-target abilities would do the next most damage, and all-target abilities the least so that there was some strategy associated with choosing an ability.

I did a similar thing for spells so that single target spells would not be so useless and the burn and poison damage system made choosing those spells more interesting because Magic Pole Axe might do more damage this turn, but Flaming Arrow or Poison Skull might do more damage over 2-4 turns. Also Ghost Sword does less damage than Magic Pole Axe, but may be able to do more damage than Magic Pole Axe to units with good physical resistance.

You also probably get more bang per buck with Flaming Arrow than Fire Ball or Fire Rain, but it takes longer to do more damage to multiple targets with Flaming Arrow and so there's the trade-off there. Then with respect to Fire Ball and Fire Rain, Fire Ball does more damage to the central target but less damage to the peripheral targets, whereas Fire Rain does more average damage to all targets.

These and other tradeoffs went through the spell redesign process and how to make spells more usefull and add strategy to their use. The original spell list balance I thought was especially weak and I only thought a handful of spells were useful. Now I feel that there are fewer useless spells.

Anyway, I've actually placed a lot of thought into the game and I've played the Mage 3 times, Warrior once, and am just starting my 2nd Paladin game all with my mod over the past year since I started (I've found that it seems to take me about 2 months or so to finish a game, when I'm playing, analyzing, modding, adding new features, and fixing issues).

I basically learned how to do virtually everything myself with the help of some of the posts in this forum. Unfortunately, since I got into this game about 2 years after it was released, I wasn't able to get really any help from any of the modders and developers of the game. This was especially true when it came to editing the *.CHAT files with their hexadecimal codes that I couldn't figure out how to generate. I PM'd quite a few people and essentially either no one responded or they responded with information that I already knew. So I basically had to just try it out and figure it out as I went.

The changes to River Fairy Diana and the new addition of Orcelyn Ordy seem to work okay, but I have no idea if there are any side effects from what I did since I couldn't get any help. Also, unfortunately, the Crossworlds Editor cannot import The Legend *.CHAT files - it crashes to desktop when I do it. So I had to look at the other wives as examples and have the new wife *.CHAT files use a lot of the same code.

More play testing will tell whether I got this right or not, but I was able to finish my last game with the River Fairy Diana changes. Orcely Ordy is completely new for this go around and I need to work on her dialog to make it more interesting, but you can at least talk to her and have babies!

By the way I'm slowly working on the Change List and have completed the *.ATOM change list and will post it shortly after this post.

Feel free to ask any more questions!

*.ATOM New Abilities and Change List
 

Okay, here is the list of changes for all the *.ATOM files I changed in the game:

New ATOM Abilities and Changes
------------------------------

If a stat says +X or -Y delta it means that it is a change relative to its previous value. For example if it says Resist All +8 it means that each resistance is increase 8 points.
Also Resist All does not apply to astral resistance (just like the spell Divine Armor). Astral resistance is special and needed in order for certain damage effects to work correctly (like Ghost Sword) and so I have not changed any astral resistance values.

• Alchemist - Resist All +8 delta
• Skeleton Archer - Dragon Arrow:
  • May now be used when adjacent to an enemy without penalty
  • May target any unit on the battlefield (even if enemies are adjacent)
• Friendly Tower
  • Base spells:
    • Haste - level dependent on tower level
    • Summon - level dependent on tower level
    • Dispel - level dependent on tower level
  • New extensible spell list based on:
    • Race (i.e. human, undead, neutral)
    • Feature (i.e. beauty, shot, humanoid)
    • Belligerence (i.e. friend or foe)
  • Random spells from "good spells" list
• Evil Tower
  • Base Spells:
    • Slow - level dependent on tower level
    • Summon - level dependent on tower level
    • Dispel - level dependent on tower level
  • New extensible spell list based on:
    • Race (i.e. human, undead, neutral)
    • Feature (i.e. beauty, shot, humanoid)
    • Belligerence (i.e. friend or foe)
  • Random spells from "evil spells" list
• Barbarian
  • New features:
    • Immune to mind spells
    • Primal Link (+2 morale to hyenas, graywolves, and all bears)
  • Fire, Physical, and Poison Resistance: +5 delta
• Berserker - new features:
  • Primal Link (+2 morale to hyenas, graywolves, and all bears)
  • Fire, Physical, and Poison Resistance: +5 delta
• Bear - new feature: Noble Beast (+2 moral to Barbarians and Berserkers)
• Ancient Bear - new feature: Noble Beast (+2 moral to Barbarians and Berserkers)
• Polar Bear - new feature: Noble Beast (+2 moral to Barbarians and Berserkers)
• Black Dragon
  • Normal attack now has a 35% chance to burn target
  • Special attack now has a 70% chance to burn target
• Bone Dragon - Special attack now has a 100% (+10% delta) chance to poison target
• Bowman - Dragon Arrow:
  • May now be used when adjacent to an enemy without penalty
  • May target any unit on the battlefield (even if enemies are adjacent)
• Cannoneer - Resist All +8 delta
• Cyclops - new features:
  • Stone Creature (resists 80% of arrow damage after physical resist)
  • Fire, Physical, Poison Resistance: +20 delta
• Reaper:
  • Reaping:
    • Ability values changed
    • 2 more levels:
      • Rage reduction
      • Rest reduction
  • Rage Drain:
    • Ability values changed
    • 3 more levels:
      • 1 Ability level
      • 2 Rage reduction levels
  • Time Back:
    • Rage consumption and experience values changed
    • Added 1 new rest reduction level
  • Black Hole: ability values changed
• Demon - domination is supposed to be +50% damage to level 1-3 creatures; however the min damage was wrong and has been fixed
• Druid:
  • Cast Bear - now has a reload of 4 instead of just 1 charge
  • Cast Bear:
    • The custom parameters are now based on percent leadership
    • "caster" parameter removed since it wasn't being used
• Dryad - Cast Thorn custom parameters now based on percent leadership
• Dwarf - Resist All +7 delta
• Elf - Dragon Arrow:
  • May now be used when adjacent to an enemy without penalty
  • May target any unit on the battlefield (even if enemies are adjacent)
• Hunter - Dragon Arrow:
  • May now be used when adjacent to an enemy without penalty
  • May target any unit on the battlefield (even if enemies are adjacent)
• Ent:
  • New features:
    • Wood Creature (resists 40% of arrow damage after physical resist)
    • Spirit of the Forest (+2 Morale to Royal Thorns)
    • Entangle
    • Poison Immunitity (see resistances)
  • Attacks changed:
    • New ability rooted (Tap Tree of Life)
    • New ability Summon Plant
  • New animation for Summon Plant
  • Main attack now has a 50% chance of entangling the unit (entangled units cannot move)
  • Resistances:
    • Fire: +50 delta
    • Magic: +50 delta
    • Physical: +25 delta
    • Poison: +30 delta (Poison Immunity)
  • Wasps ability
    • Can now be used when units are adjacent and can target non-adjacent units
    • Distance: +1 delta
    • No penalty for attacking adjacent units
  • Run ability is now disabled and only enabled after the Ent uses its Tap Tree of Life ability
• Ancient Ent:
  • New features:
    • Wood Creature (resists 40% of arrow damage after physical resist)
    • Spirit of the Forest (+2 Morale to Royal Thorns)
    • Entangle
    • Poison Immunitity (see resistances)
  • Attacks changed:
    • New ability rooted (Tap Tree of Life)
    • New ability Summon Greater Plant
    • Reload ability removed
  • New animation for Summon Plant
  • New Run ability
  • Main attack now has a 50% chance of entangling the unit (entangled units cannot move)
  • Resistances:
    • Fire: +75 delta
    • Magic: +75 delta
    • Physical: +30 delta
    • Poison: +30 delta (Poison Immunity)
  • Wasps ability
    • Can now be used when units are adjacent and can target non-adjacent units
    • Distance: +1 delta
    • No penalty for attacking adjacent units
    • Now reloads @3
  • Run ability is now disabled and only enabled after the Ent uses its Tap Tree of Life ability
• Evil Book Spell Level 1:
  • New features - Poison Immunity
  • Statistic changes:
    • Initiative: +2 delta
    • Hitback Protection (i.e. units cannot retaliate)
    • Resitances:
      • Physical: +5 delta
      • Poison: +30 delta
      • Fire: +5 delta
    • Charges - spell cast charges = 1
• Evil Book Spell Level 2:
  • New features - Poison Immunity
  • Statistic changes:
    • Attack: +10 delta
    • Defense: +10 delta
    • DefenseUp: +3 delta
    • Initiative: +2 delta
    • Speed: +1 delta
    • Hitback Protection (i.e. units cannot retaliate)
    • Resistances:
      • Physical: +10 delta
      • Poison: +30 delta
      • Fire: +10 delta
    • Damage: +10 delta to +25 delta
    • Charges - spell cast charges = 2 (+1 delta)
• Evil Book Spell Level 3:
  • New features - Poison Immunity
  • Statistic changes:
    • Attack: +35 delta
    • Defense: +35 delta
    • DefenseUp: +9 delta
    • Initiative: +2 delta
    • Speed: +2 delta
    • Critical Hit: +15 delta
    • Hitback Protection (i.e. units cannot retaliate)
    • Resistances:
      • Physical: +15 delta
      • Poison: +30 delta
      • Fire: +15 delta
    • Damage: +30 delta to +80 delta
    • Charges - spell cast charges = 3 (+2 delta)
• Ghost
  • Resistances:
    • Physical: +30 delta
    • Poison: +30 delta
    • Magic: -100 delta
  • Damage type: Magic
  • Life Drain: 100% of damage (+70% was 30%)
• Cursed Ghost
  • Resistances:
    • Physical: +30 delta
    • Poison: +30 delta
    • Magic: -100 delta
  • Damage type: Magic
  • Life Drain: 100% of damage (+50% was 50%)
• Giant - Resist All: +10 delta
• Green Dragon - Magic Resistance: +20 delta
• Horseman - New ability: Charge! (similar to Cerberus Take in Armored Princess)
• Imp - Fire Shot: +15% chance to burn target (was 0%)
• Scoffer Imp - Fire Shot: +15% chance to burn target (was 0%)
• Royal Thorn:
  • New features:
    • Thorn Commander (+3 to allied Thorns)
    • Poison Immunity
    • Resistances
      • Poison: +30 delta
      • Fire: +25 delta
  • Cast Thorn - custom parameters are now based on percent leadership
  • Distance: +1 delta
• Lina:
  • Chargers: Ability values changed
  • Ice Ball:
    • Ability values changed
    • New ability values:
      • Attack - Gizmo's attack now increases
      • Defense - Gizmo's defense now increases
      • Initiative - Gizmo's initiative now increases
    • 2 more levels
      • 1 more rage level
      • 1 more rest level
  • Ice Thorns:
    • Ability values changed
    • 2 more levels
      • 1 more rage level
      • 1 more rest level
  • Gizmo:
    • Ability values changed
    • New ability values:
      • Charges - now many times Gizmo can Attack / Resurrect before it disappears
      • Action Points - how far can Gizmo move before it stops
      • Initiative - when does Gizmo move
    • 1 more rest level
• Miner - Resist All: +5 delta
• Ice Orb:
  • New features:
    • Mind Immunity
    • Poison Immunity (see resistances)
  • Statistic:
    • Attack: +10 delta
    • Defense: +10 delta
    • DefenseUp: +8 delta
  • Resistances:
    • Physical: +55 delta
    • Poison: +80 delta (Poison Immunity)
    • Fire: +50 delta
• Phoenix Spell Level 1 (Young Phoenix):
  • New features:
    • Mind Immunity
    • Golem
  • Statistics:
    • Attack: +5 delta
    • Defense: +5 delta
    • Initiative: +2 delta
    • Speed: +1 delta
  • Resistances:
    • Physical: +10 delta
    • Poison: +5 delta
    • Fire: +100 delta (super immunity)
  • Damage:
    • 50% astral
    • 50% fire
    • Burn: +40% delta (now 70%)
• Phoenix Spell Level 2 (Mature Phoenix):
  • New features:
    • Mind Immunity
    • Golem
  • Statistics:
    • Attack: +20 delta
    • Defense: +15 delta
    • Initiative: +2 delta
    • Speed: +1 delta
    • Critical Hit: -5% delta
  • Resistances:
    • Physical: +15 delta
    • Poison: +10 delta
    • Fire: +100 delta (super immunity)
  • Damage:
    • 50% astral
    • 50% fire
    • Overal: +10 delta to +20 delta
    • Burn: +35% delta (now 85%)
• Phoenix Spell Level 3 (Ancient Phoenix):
  • New features:
    • Mind Immunity
    • Golem
  • Statistics:
    • Attack: +50 delta
    • Defense: +30 delta
    • DefenseUp: +7 delta
    • Initiative: +2 delta
    • Speed: +1 delta
    • Critical Hit: -10% delta
  • Resistances:
    • Physical: +20 delta
    • Poison: +15 delta
    • Fire: +100 delta (super immunity)
  • Damage:
    • 50% astral
    • 50% fire
    • Overal: +20 delta to +0
    • Burn: +30% delta (now 100%)
• Red Dragon - normal attack now has 25% chance to cause burning
• Sleem:
  • Poisonous Spit - ability values changed
  • Evil Shoal - ability values changed
  • Cloud of Poison - ability values changed
  • Glot's Armor
    • Ability values changed
    • Resist All: +50 delta
• Fire Spider:
  • New Features:
    • Demon
    • Poison Immunity -> Poison Defense (see resistances)
    • Fire Defense -> Fire Reistance (see resistances)
  • Resistances:
    • Poison: -25 delta (was +50 now is +25)
    • Fire: +25 delta (was +25 now is +50)
• Sprite
  • New feature - cutie (similar to beauty - humanoids miss 20% of the time)
  • New avoid animation to go with cutie
• Lake Fairy
  • New feature - cutie (similar to beauty - humanoids miss 20% of the time)
  • New avoid animation to go with cutie
• Zerock:
  • Smashing Sword
    • New ability values
    • Now causes bleeding (100% of the time)
    • Bleeding decreases target's attack and defense
  • Stone Wall
    • New ability values
    • New defense parameter (value based on level)
    • New Resist All parameter (value based on level)
  • Rockfall
    • New ability values
    • Now causes stunning (percent based on level)
  • Underground Blades
    • New ability values
    • Now causes bleeding (percent based on level)
  • Stone Wall
  • Defense: +10 delta
  • Resist All: -1 delta
• Thorn-Hunter:
  • New feature - Poison Immunity (see resistances)
  • New ability - Gift of Life (sacrifices unit to heal / resurrect another plant)
  • Poison Resistance: +30 delta (Poison Immunity)
  • Sowing - custom parameters are now based on percent leadership
  • New animation for Gift of Life
• Thorn Warrior:
  • New feature - Poison Immunity (see resistances)
  • New ability - Gift of Life (sacrifices unit to heal / resurrect another plant)
  • Poison Resistance: +30 delta (Poison Immunity)
  • Sowing - custom parameters are now based on percent leadership
  • New animation for Gift of Life
• Werewolf Elf / Werewolf- New Leader of the Pack (+1 Morale to Graywolves)

I can provide the rationale for any change if you have any questions about why I decided to change it - feel free to ask and this posting should serve as a good basis for discussion.

I'll try to work on the other file list changes over the next couple of weeks or so and get them out as well.

Thanks for reading!

/C\/C\ Matt

Click Here for the *.LNG List
Click Here for the *.TXT List

Hello Mat :-) I dl your mod and checked some things i wanted to copy to CW (spell mechanics, change to partial skill bonuses etc), but when i actually try to play game with your mod i get error : Error signature App name kb.exe, App version 0.0.0.0 . . .
So i cant even start game with your mod in game/data/mods/mod_homm3_babies . . .
What patch did you make mod for ? Or am i missing something else :-(

Matt: The game won't load. I checked the lng files but can't imagine any other prefix than eng_ since my game is the english version, from the original (European if that matters) DVD disc, updated to version 1.7.

Incredible list of mods! This is going to be one that I download and try out in detail; thanks!

Some commentary and questions:
- mature & ancient phoenixes need to be Spell Level 2 & 3 (both say 1).
- fire spider has a vulnerability to poison (-25), your description says "Poison Defense"; should this be +25?
- for the Thorn plants' "Gift of Life", possibly change the name to "Mulch"? :)

I know that items + wives + troops all give cumulative morale bonuses (for example, human + undead + demon without Tolerance == really bad human morale), but:
- is it correct that between WerElf and Barbarians, grey wolves could get +3 morale?
- do BOTH barbarian and berserker give +2 morale (total == +4) to bears?
- same question for dryad + ent + ancient ent (total == +5) to royal thorns?

I'm not sure what's wrong!
 

I really apologize for this. I'm not sure if you read the included README, but the version that I made the mod on is for the Gamer's Gate V1.7 version of the game.

Please let me know the steps you followed to try to play the mod. I'll also try to perform some steps on my end to see if I can duplicate your error messages.

If it ends up being a version issue, I might need you to email me the ses.kfs and loc_ses.kfs files (in the sessions\base folder) to see if the file names are different.

We'll get this figured out!:)

/C\/C\

I'll Clarify the Changes a Bit Better
 

Thanks for the comments!

I'll fix the Phoenix Spell Levels (forgot to change those when I copied and pasted).

As far as the changes are concerned for the Fire Spider I mean that it is -25 from its original value (I should state what it was previously) and so it was 50 and now is 25.

That's funny with "Mulch"!

As far as morale bonuses are concerned, they are not cumulative. For example you can't take 5 Knights put 1 in each slot and have +5 Morale to all your knights. Same bonuses do not stack. So since Barbarians and Berserkers are both Primal Link, then two Primal Links does not stack, but Barbarians with Werewolf Elves are two different bonuses (Primal Link and Leader of the Pack) so your Graywolves would get +3! This is what I meant by new synergies and gives you incentive to try some interesting unit combinations you may not have tried before.

I'll edit the changes post to provide a more clear description between changes.

Thanks again!

/C\/C\

The Game starts!
 

Following your advice elsewhere I made a zip file of the loc_ses file and then unzipped it. I seem to have a multilingual version there, although I don't remember a language choice, and all prefixes have only two letters (en_ and so on). I changed all prefixes in the mod files from eng_ to en_ and now I'm in the training part of the game. I have Inquisitors instead of Peasants, so something is changed.

But I encountered another problem: when my hero reached level 2, his choices and the rune numbers were all blank.

Hello :-)
ALso changed my patch form 1.xxx (no idea) to 1.7 and placed all your files to game/data/mods/homm3_babies and it works now. I`ll report if encounter some other problems. Until then have fun :-D

I can see these other versions are going to be "fun"!
 

Erkki:

I can see these other versions of the game are going to fight us – does the game lockup there or can you pretend to see the values and just click one and continue?

If you can click and continue, can you see if you got any runes and you can’t see which bonus you picked, but can you see if you got an increase somewhere (i.e. mana, rage, leadership, attack, defense, or intelligence)?

I did make some changes to the levelup system, but of course it works on my version. I wonder if there are changes to the LUA files or TXT files? One thing I noticed in the HERO.TXT file is there is a leadership table that is no longer used, but maybe your version still uses it? I don’t know.

I think I’m going to need you to send me your ses.kfs file so I can study it for differences unless it was the same date and size as what I mentioned below (7/8/2010 10:01PM, 6,217KB). It looks like you already resolved the loc_ses.kfs issue with the *.LNG files (whew!) so I think I need to understand if there are any differences with the *.LUA files.

Another idea that popped into my head is that you could try to remove the mod_homm3_portraits.kfs to see if there is an issue with the DDS files included there as it may affect the graphics somehow? Not sure just grasping at straws there.

We’ll keep plugging away at this…

Thanks!

P.S. I'm starting to remember now when I was first modding the leveling up that maybe the numbers were blank when I had issues with what I was doing. It's just a vague memory so I can't quite remember. I can always break it, I guess, and see how it behaves... The real question, though, is why would your version have issues with the LUA / TXT files. Hmmm... maybe its the encoding? The text editor that I use predates UNICODE. But you started the game fine and so it needed to read text files for that. Hmmm...:confused:

Just had another thought...
 

Erkki:

I just had another thought – maybe it is the encoding of the text files I saved. I use an editor that predates UNICODE and I guess other methods of encoding text files.

Could you do me a favor and simply extract HERO.TXT and LOGIC_HERO.LUA from mod_homm3_babies.kfs and then simply open them in your version of Notepad and then save them (without making changes)? You don’t have to re-add them to mod_homm3_babies.kfs, just copy them to your mods folder and they’ll take precedence over the ones in the KFS.

I’m hoping if it’s an encoding thing that your version of Notepad will correct the encoding for your Windows or your locale I guess. The changes to the leveling up are just in those two files, so it is just a minor thing to try.

You can also see if the sizes of the files change after you resave them in Notepad...

Good luck!

Sweetness!:grin:

had time to check some things:

My files compared to yours:
King’s Bounty\data\data.kfs – 7/8/2010 10:01PM, 33,447KB (mine is 33,582KB)

2.King’s Bounty\sessions\base\ses.kfs – 7/8/2010 10:01PM, 6,217KB (the same)

3.King’s Bounty\sessions\base\loc_ses.kfs – 7/8/2010 10:01PM, 809KB (mine is 3,353KB but it has several language files)



I opened and saved those two files in Notepad and replayed the level up and noticed that still things were blank. I could continue but noticed no increase in runes or elsewhere (I checked mana and rage, too). I don't know what else to check - weren't most of your advice for getting the mod to start?

And I forgot at first to save those files in unicode. If I do it, things don't change - but I get an error message for the logic file: unexpected symbol near `ÿ'.

Erkki

Why doesn't it work???
 

It looks like you've covered my ideas pretty thoroughly. What is interesting is that the ses.kfs size is identical to mine so as long as I edited the files correctly, everything should work!

The problem is that it doesn't. I have no problems with the levelup code on my end so what is different on your end? The only thing I can think about right now is that our versions of LUA.EXE are different. Can you let me know the size and date of your LUA.EXE? This file is located in your King's Bounty folder along with KB.EXE. I'm not at home right now, so I don't know mine, but will find out what is is later.

That's the last thing I can think about. The only other thing I can suggest you try is before you level up, can you go purchase some Thorns and try out their Gift of Life ability? Check to see if the ability works (they need to using sowing first, then they can use Gift of Life on an adjacent plant). That is more LUA code that I added and so the idea here is to see if any of the LUA code works. Another thing you can try is to restart a new game with a Paladin and check to see if the Glory skill decreases the leadership requirement of your units 2%. I think Priests have 50 leadership so their leadership should be 49 and I think Inquisitors have 100 leadership so thier leadership should be 98. Once again the idea is to see if any of the LUA code works with your setup.

I wish I could work on your computer and find out what is going on - this is driving me crazy! The next step would be to run the debugger - I'll go into how to do that if it comes to it...

Things I checked
 

Glory skill seems to work; Inquisitors have 98 Leadership.
There isn't any LUA.Exe, only LUAIDE.dll., 928KB.
HERO.TXT and LOGIC_HERO.LUA become twice as big if I change them from ansi to unicode, but since the warning about an unexpected symbol slows loading down, I returned them to ansi.
I can't remove portraits, the game won't load then.

It seems you have a very sound approach to implementing your changes in this mod, Matt. Well done! Some of the useless units might actually be viable with the changes you've made. I'll PM you when I've finished my current game.

About the Phoenix: did you not change its HP values? That seemed to be the most glaring deficiency of the spell--it always dies in one hit not too far into the game.

Yep!
 

I sure did - both the Phoenix and Evil Book's stats increase based on the caster's intellect. Attack / Defense / Health, etc. are all effected by the caster's power.

I'm still working on my list of changes - they are organized by file type and so I'm hoping to post more stuff later...

By the way, balance is somewhat in the eye of the beholder, but I think you'll see that for the most part the strategy with which you play will attune to how easy or difficulty things are for you.

The things that I still check for are the increases based on level-ups, etc. for spirit abilities, spells, etc. and the only areas that I think are potentially weak are areas that I don't play. For example, I don't really play undead and so I'm not sure how well the changes I made work for them. I'll need to either play them some time or get some feedback from someone who has played them.

I'm also debating on giving Bone Dragons the ability to cast a random negative chaos (like Weakness, Doom, Plague, Fear) spell on a Level 1-4 troop when they attack to make them more powerful. Even Devilfish cause Fear on attack and so I'm thinking that the Bone Dragons still may need a boost. Those spells aren't overpowering and it might be a neat addition for them. We'll see, I'm still cogitating on it.

That's the funny thing about replaying is that every time I restart new ideas flash into my head.

Anyway, should be interesting to see people's feedback once I officially release it and they start playing!

Found the Problem - Woohoo!
 

Thanks to Erkki for helping me track down the problem he was having!:)

It didn't occur to me that he was playing a difficulty level other than impossible, where I had an error in the changes to the levelup code that I made where both Easy and Normal increase the amount of mana and rage you may get on level up. Since I had been play testing on Impossilbe I missed testing this part of the change!

I've also added a version of the mod for those with an English localization where the *.LNG files use "en_" instead of "eng_". So now if you have either English localization version you can playtest the mod!

Thanks again for all your help!

P.S. By the way, what's the change to the levelup code you ask? Well before there was a set increase in Attack / Defense / Intellect and Mana / Rage making the choice for choosing Leadership when it occured the easy choice, especially later in the game. Now, as your character gains levels, you may be presented with a value other than +1 for Attack / Defense / Intellect based on your level as well as +default for Mana / Rage. This makes the selection of Leadership tougher, especially when you're choosing, for example, between 1000 Leadership and +3 Attack. Hmmm... much tougher choice now.

Okay - making progress!

*.LNG Change List
 

Here's the change list to the *.LNG files. Some of these may be a little vague since the actual values are in another set of files. Anyway here we go:

Language Files - *.LNG
----------------------

• New files:
  • eng_chat_1315394584_0068736578.lng - River Fairy Diana's new wife chat.
  • eng_chat_1379826769_0079826769.lng - Orcelyn Ordy's new wife chat.
  • eng_homm3_babies_diana.lng - This file contains all the baby bonuses for the wife specified.
  • eng_homm3_babies_feanora.lng - This file contains all the baby bonuses for the wife specified.
  • eng_homm3_babies_gerda.lng - This file contains all the baby bonuses for the wife specified.
  • eng_homm3_babies_mirabella.lng - This file contains all the baby bonuses for the wife specified.
  • eng_homm3_babies_neoka.lng - This file contains all the baby bonuses for the wife specified.
  • eng_homm3_babies_orcelyn.lng - This file contains all the baby bonuses for the wife specified.
  • eng_homm3_babies_rina.lng - This file contains all the baby bonuses for the wife specified.
  • eng_homm3_babies_xeona.lng - This file contains all the baby bonuses for the wife specified.
  • eng_kids.lng - All the original kids have been moved from eng_item.lng to this file.
  • eng_wives.lng - All the wife descriptions have been moved from eng_item.lng to this file.
• Changed Files:
  • eng_actors.lng
    • Orcelyn Ordy - your new Orc wife!
      • New actor name
      • New actor description
  • eng_battle.lng
    • grammar - changes that improve grammar or fix a spelling error.
    • add_blog_last_hero=… - The spell "last_hero" has changed and so the battle log updated.
    • new gizmo messages - Gizmo has new battle log messages for all its abilities.
    • new thorn gift messages - The new ability "cast_sacrifice" (Gift of Life) messages.
    • new hemoraging - when a unit that already has the effect bleeding is hit again to cause the same effect, +1 is added to the effect's duration and this message describes that effect.
    • new ablaze - when a unit that already has the effect burn is hit again to cause the same effect, +1 is added to the effect's duration and this message describes that effect.
    • new jolt - when a unit that already has the effect shock is hit again to cause the same effect, +1 is added to the effect's duration and this message describes that effect.
    • new bitter - when a unit that already has the effect frozen is hit again to cause the same effect, +1 is added to the effect's duration and this message describes that effect.
    • new noxious - when a unit that already has the effect poisoned is hit again to cause the same effect, +1 is added to the effect's duration and this message describes that effect.
    • new sanctified - when a unit that already has the effect holy is hit again to cause the same effect, +1 is added to the effect's duration and this message describes that effect.
    • new dazed - when a unit that already has the effect stun is hit again to cause the same effect, +1 is added to the effect's duration and this message describes that effect.
    • new weaker - when a unit that already has the effect weakened is hit again to cause the same effect, +1 is added to the effect's duration and this message describes that effect.
    • new entangle - new effect Entangle's battle log message.
    • new snarl - when a unit that already has the effect entangle is hit again to cause the same effect, +1 is added to the effect's duration and this message describes that effect.
    • res_poison - Units with a resistance to an effect can now resist that effect after they get it.
    • res_burn - Units with a resistance to an effect can now resist that effect after they get it.
    • new execrate - when a unit that already has the effect curse is hit again to cause the same effect, +1 is added to the effect's duration and this message describes that effect.
    • new enemy_hero_book_times_log - This is a new message for when an enemy hero can cast more than 1 spell per round.
    • new enemy_hero_mana_regen_log - The is a new message for an enemy hero's mana regeneration during combat.
    • new gizmo messages
    • Attack message
    • Resurrect message
    • AP ally message
    • AP enemy message
    • Dispel bad spells message
    • Dispel good spells message
    • Gizmo now has variable charges and the number of charges are mentioned when summoning Gizmo to the battlefield and after each time it uses a charge
  • eng_chat_0036019756_1002729958.lng - Updates to Habbab Ordy's chat outside the castle.
  • eng_chat_0170292983_0979371428.lng - Updates to Habbab Ordy's chat inside the castle.
  • eng_chat_1315394584_0076798669.lng - Updates to River Fairy Diana's chat to allow you to marry her.
  • eng_items.lng
    • wife text deleted - The text descriptions for all the wives have been moved to the new file eng_wives.lng
    • kid text deleted - The text descriptions for all the kids have been moved to the new file eng_kids.lng
  • eng_skills.lng
    • skill name change - The text name description has changed from Bowmen Commander to Ranged Speciliast because this skill now applies to all ranged projectile troops.
    • Ranged Specialist - This skill decreases the Leadership requirements when the hero is hiring ranged units that use projectiles (Alchemist, Skeleton Archer, Bowman, Cannoneer, Catapult, Cyclops, Elf, Hunter, Goblin, Thorn, and Royal Thorn) and also increases their abilities.
    • Combat Readiness - All troops in the hero's army receive less damage from Physical Attacks during the first round. The Hero's Defense is also increased.
    • Training
      • Adds to the Hero's Attack Skill
      • Improves troops of a certain level by improving their abilities
      • Teaches some human troops new skills
    • Dark Commander - Under the banner of the Dark Commander, "evil" troops (including all Orc, Undead, and Demon troops as well as Barbarians, Pirates, Robbers, Devilfish, Wolves (including Werewolf Elves), Hyenas, Spiders, Snakes, Beholders, and Cyclops) fight more effectively, receiving bonuses to Attack, Initiative, and then Speed.
    • Onslaught - Speed and vigor are the secret to victory. During the first turn, the hero's troops receive a bonus to Initiative at skill level 1 and then Initiative and Speed at skill level 2 and 3.
    • Iron Fist
      • Adds to the Hero's Attack Skill
      • Adds to the Hero's Rage
      • Decreases the Leadership Requirements when the hero is hiring warriors (Swordsmen, Guardsmen, Horsemen, Knights, Dwarves, Barbarians, Berserkers, Furious Goblins, Orcs, Veteran Orcs, Skeleton Warriors, Zombies, Decaying Zombies, Black Knights, Werewolf Elves, and Demons) and improves their abilities
    • Holy Anger
      • Increases the attack of the hero's troops against demons and the undead (this does not affect allied demons and undead)
      • Increases the power of Order spells (Battle Cry, Demon Slayer, Divine Armor, Dragon Arrow, Dragon Slayer, Fit of Energy, Healing, Helplessness, Life Light, Lightning, Magic Pole Axe, Peacefulness, Phoenix, and Resurrection)
      • Increases the Hero's Rage and Mana
    • Glory - Everyone wants to fight under the banner of the famous hero. This increases the hero's Leadership as well as reducing the Leadership Requirements for all units.
    • description change - Scouting adds +1 Intellect @Level 3
    • description change - Tolerance adds +1 Morale @Level 2
    • Inquisition - This skill decreases the Leadership Requirements when the hero is hiring Priests and Inquisitors and allows the hero to upgrade Priests to Inquisitors and improves their abilities.
      • Priests / Inquisitors:
        • Leadership Requirements [param1]
        • Unit Attack / Defense: +Unit Level
        • Health: [param2]%
        • Critical Hit: [param4]%
        • Initiative / Morale / Speed: +1
      • It also increases the Hero's Rage, Mana, and Intellect
        • Rage: [param2]
        • Mana: [param2]
        • Intellect: [param3]
    • Healer
      • An experienced healer increases the life of all units
      • Can use divine and protection spells and unit abilities more effectively. Spells - Healing, Resurrection, Bless, Divine Armor, Light of Life, Stone Skin, Peacefulness, and Magic Source; Abilities - Healing, Resurrection, Gift of Life.
      • Also increases the Health, Defense, and Resistance of the summoned Phoenix.
    • Archmage
      • This skill decreases the Leadership requirements when the hero is hiring Priests, Inquisitors, Druids, Shamans, Necromancers and Archmages and improves their abilities
      • It also increases the Hero's Intellect
    • Destroyer - Mages who specialize in combat spells will inflict more damage with them.
      • Also increases the Attack and Damage of summoned units (Phoenix and Evil Book).
    • Higher Magic - The secrets of higher magic:
      • Increase the Hero's Intellect
      • Increase the Hero's Mana
      • Allow the hero to use his Spell Book two times per turn during combat.
    • Necromancy
      • Allows the use of the Resurrect spell to raise the Undead
      • After combat, part of a slain troop can be resurrected
      • Amplifies spells that deal pain and suffering. (Pain Mirror, Poison Skull, Plague, Sacrifice, Kamikaze, and Necro Call)
      • Decreases the Leadership Requirements of the Undead and improves their abilities
      • Increases the Health, Attack, and Resistance of the summoned Evil Book.
  • eng_spells.lng
    • new tags
      • Base Damage
      • Base Periphery Damage
      • Level Damage (*)Increase
      • Base Healing
      • Level Healing (*)Increase
      • Percent Healing Damage
      • Base Percent Damage to Allies
      • Base Power
      • Base Bonus
      • Base Penalty
      • Base Mana
      • Item Power (+)Bonus
      • Item Damage (+)Bonus
      • Item Power (*)Bonus
      • Hero Level (*)Bonus
      • Destroyer Skill (*)Bonus
      • Attack Spell (*)Bonus
      • Defensive Spell (*)Bonus
      • Healer Skill (*)Bonus
      • Holy Rage Skill (*)Bonus
      • Holy Rage Skill (+)Bonus
      • Fire Damage (*)Bonus
      • Physical Damage (*)Bonus
      • Magic Damage (*)Bonus
      • Poison Damage (*)Bonus
      • Astral Damage (*)Bonus
      • Intelligence Power (*)Bonus
      • Necromancy Skill (*)Bonus
      • Total Applied (*)Bonus
      • Base Duration
      • Item Duration Bonus
      • Intelligence Duration Bonus
      • Healer Skill Duration Bonus
      • Necromancy Skill Duration Bonus
      • Base Count
      • Intelligence Count Bonus
      • Healer Skill Damage Bonus
      • Necromancy Skill Damage Bonus
      • Infliction (+)Bonus
      • Infliction (*)Bonus
      • Item Statistic (*)Bonus
      • Hero Level Statistic (*)Bonus
      • Total Base Statistic (+)Bonus
      • Healer Skill (*)Bonus - Health, Defense, and Resistance
      • ration]Necromancy Skill (*)Bonus - Health, Attack, and Resistance
      • Holy Rage Skill (*)Bonus - Attack / Defense / Damage / Health
        • Critical Hit
        • Initiative / Speed
      • Item Attack (*)Bonus
      • Item Defense (*)Bonus
      • Destroyer Skill (*)Bonus - Damage
      • Fire Damage (+)Bonus
      • Physical Damage (+)Bonus
      • Magic Damage (+)Bonus
      • Poison Damage (+)Bonus
      • Astral Damage (+)Bonus
      • Combat Readiness Skill (+)Bonus - Physical Resistance (one round only)
      • Item Base Damage (*)Bonus
      • Item Base Defense (*)Bonus
      • Item Base Attack (*)Bonus
      • Item Base Health (*)Bonus
      • Item Critical Hit (*)Bonus
      • Item Speed Bonus
      • Item Initiative Bonus
      • Item Unlimited Retaliation Bonus
    • Lightning
      • spell_lightning_desc_1=^spells_tSpell^Lightning hits the target, inflicting magic damage and has a chance to shock it.<br>Lightning does full damage to the first target it strikes, then strikes the second target for 1/2 damage. The second target must be within 4 cells of the first target.<br>If Shock is successful, then the target suffers the affliction for the duration specified.[Bonuses]<br>Damage: [OS01_Damage], Shock: [OS01_Shock].
      • spell_lightning_desc_2=^spells_tSpell^Lightning hits the target, inflicting magic damage and has a chance to shock it.<br>Lightning does full damage to the first target it strikes, then strikes the second target for 1/2 damage, and the third for 1/4 damage. All additional targets must be within 4 cells of the first target.<br>If Shock is successful, then the target suffers the affliction for the duration specified.[Bonuses]<br>Damage: [OS01_Damage], Shock: [OS01_Shock].
      • spell_lightning_desc_3=^spells_tSpell^Lightning hits the target, inflicting magic damage and has a chance to shock it.<br>Lightning does full damage to the first target it strikes, then strikes the second target for 1/2 damage, and the third for 1/4 damage, and the fourth for 1/8 damage. All additional targets must be within 4 cells of the first target.<br>If Shock is successful, then the target suffers the affliction for the duration specified.[Bonuses]<br>[sys]Damage:[/s] [OS01_Damage], Shock: [OS01_Shock].
    • Armageddon - Armageddon covers the battlefield with flames, causing astral damage to all troops.
      • If Burn is successful, then the target suffers the affliction for the duration specified.
      • Friendly troop damage: [CS06_PRC].
    • Life Light - Undead creatures within the selected area take Magic Damage, suffer Holy Shackles which decreases their Attack and Defense, and try to run away from the consecrated place. Troops of other races, on the contrary, take healing. Does not affect demons.
      • If Holy shackles are successful, then the target suffers the affliction for the duration specified.
    • Enchanted Hero
      • name change - Last Hero -> Enchanted Hero
      • Desription - If the troop is attacked, it receives a random beneficial spell or if it is killed then it is automatically resurrected. Either way the spell's duration is decreased.
    • Summon Phoenix - Summons a Phoenix to a random free cell near a friendly troop. The Phoenix fights to the death or until the end of combat. The Phoenix's attack is so hot that half the damage is astral damage and the other half is fire damage. There can be only one Phoenix on the battlefield.
      • The Hero's Intelligence, Destroyer Skill, Healer Skill, and Spell Amplifying Items increase the statistics of the Phoenix.
    • new hint template - Spell Helplessness is now mass @level 3 and requires the use of the mass spell template.
    • Fit of Energy - Adds some Action Points to the friendly target, allows a target which has spent all its action points to attack one more time this turn, and gives unlimited retaliation (at level 3) to the unit for the duration specified.
    • new hint template - Spell Haste is now mass @level 3 and requires the use of the mass spell template.
    • Magic Spring - Friendly troop increases its Defense, and when receiving Damage its commander gains Mana, while the spell's duration decreases.
      • Note that the mana increase is affected by the combat duration and the power of the caster.
    • Book of Evil - Summons the Book of Evil, which casts random spells on the enemy. The more powerful the book, the more harmful the spells. The quantity of spells also depends on the book's power.
      • The hero's intellect plays a role in the power of the spells and Intellect as well as the Hero's Destroyer Skill, Necromancy Skill, and Spell Amplifying Items play a role in the strength of the book.
      • When the book is hungry, it can't use magic and you should feed it by making the book attack either friendly or enemy troops.
    • Trap - Places a trap on the battlefield. The trapped troop receives physical damage, loses all Action Points, and has a chance of being poisoned.
    • Invisibility - now only effects Level 4 units @spell level 3. No more no loss with Green Dragon + Invisibility + Glot's Armor + Armageddon.
    • new effect entangle - The target is entangled and unable to move.
    • change to effect_freeze- When a target is frozen their initiative is now set to 1.
  • eng_spirits.lng
    • New spirit hints
      • Dam
      • Ability Level
      • Attack
      • Defense
      • Resist All
      • AP
      • Initiative
      • Init
    • New Gizmo ability descriptions:
      • Emergency Structural Repair
      • Adrenaline-Booster Beam
      • Adrenaline-Depletion Beam
      • Dispel Ray
      • Emergency Re-Animation Beam
      • Gamma-Destructor Ray
    • Update to Description
      • Zerock's
        • "lump" - Turns from stone to blade, and inflicts [damage] points of damage to the target as well as causing bleeding to the target. If the target is a mage or a tower, this damage is doubled. Bleeding targets suffer [s][bleeding]%[/s] decrease in Attack and Defense.
        • "wall" - Sets a Stone Wall on the battlefield, which will stand until it is destroyed or its lifetime expires. The Stone Wall is not affected by Spells or side effects of attacks (i.e. burning, poisoning, etc.).
          • [abilitylevel]
          • Health: [d][health]
          • Defense: [d][defense]
          • Resist All: [d][res_all]%
          • Life time: [d][time]
        • "rockfall" - Casts a shower of stone blades, inflicting [damage] points of damage to all enemy targets within the selected area with a possibility of stunning the target. Targeted mages and towers suffer double damage.
          • [abilitylevel]
          • Chance to Stun: [d][stunning]%
          • Area: [d][square]
        • "quake" - Shakes the battleground, summoning sharp stone blades, which inflict [damage] points of damage to enemy targets. Mages and towers suffer double damage. There is a [s][bleeding]%[/s] chance of causing bleeding to the target with a [s][bleeding]%[/s] decrease in Attack and Defense.
      • Sleem's
        • "glot" - Surrounds a friendly troop with a magic field which absorbs all damage, is immune to all spells and effects, and protects the troop. However, this field does not allow the troop to move.
          • [abilitylevel]
          • Takes damage: [d][health]
          • Resist All: [d][res_all]%
      • Lina's
        • "enboxes" - Sets several chargers on the battlefield, which give Mana and Rage to the hero. [TM]Note that the mana and rage increase is affected by the combat duration.[/s] Any troop which picks up a charger gains 1 Action Point (AP).
          • [abilitylevel]
          • Chargers: [d][count]
          • Mana/Rage: [d][mana]/[erage]
        • "orb" - Summons to the battlefield an Ice Ball, a powerful combat unit.
          • [abilitylevel]
          • Health: [d][health]
          • [def]
          • Damage: [d][damage2]
          • [atk]
          • [init]
        • "gizmo" - Summons a mechanical creature onto the battlefield, which attacks enemy targets, heals and resurrects friendly troops, dispels magic, and alters the Action Points of friend and foe.
          • [abilitylevel]
          • Healing / Resurrection: [d][heal]
          • Damage: [d][damage2]
          • Removes harmful effects: [d][dispell2]
          • Removes useful effects: [d][dispell1]
          • Decreases AP of enemy targets: [d][AP2]
          • Gives AP and double move to friendly targets: [d][AP1]
          • Attack / Resurrect Charges: [d][charges]
          • Action Points: [d][ap]
          • [init]
    • Update to Levelup Description:
      • Zerock's
        • "lump"
        • "wall"
        • "rockfall"
      • Sleem's
        • "spittle"
        • "glot"
      • Reaper's
        • "reaping"
        • "rage_gain"
        • "time_return"
      • Lina's
        • "enboxes"
        • "orb"
        • "devatron"
        • "gizmo"
  • eng_units.lng
    • grammar
    • inf_human_race_heads
    • inf_elf_race_heads
    • inf_orc_race_heads
    • inf_dwarf_race_heads
    • Plural of this race.
      • inf_undead_race_heads
      • inf_demon_race_heads
      • inf_neutral_race_heads
    • gismo -> gizmo
    • New hint_morale bonus.
      • _shot_commander3 - Ranged Special Level 3
      • _inquisition1 - Inquisition Level 1
      • _tolerance2 - Tolerance Level 2
      • _megamage3 - Archmage Level 3_bear - Noble Beast
      • _barbarian - Primal Link
      • _kingthorn - Thorn Monarch
      • _ent - Spirit of the Forest
      • _werewolf - Leader of the Pack
  • eng_units_features.lng
    • grammar
    • werewolf feature update - adds Leader of the Pack
    • wolf feature update - adds Leader of the Pack
    • ent feature update - adds Wooden, Spirit of the Forest, and Entangle
    • sprite feature update - adds Cutie
    • sprite2 feature update - adds Cutie
    • barbarian feature update - adds Immune to Mind Spells and Primal Link
    • berserk feature update - adds Immune to Mind Spells and Primal Link
    • bear feature update - adds Noble Beast
    • bear_white feature update - adds Noble Beast
    • kingthorn feature update - adds Thorn Monarch
    • spider_fire feature update - Poison Defense (+50) is now Poison Resistance (+25)
    • phoenix feature update - adds Immune to Mind Spells
    • book1 feature update - adds Immune to Poison, Magic Immunity, and Immune to Minds Spells
    • book2 feature update - adds Immune to Poison, Magic Immunity, and Immune to Minds Spells
    • book3 feature update - adds Immune to Poison, Magic Immunity, and Immune to Minds Spells
    • orb feature update - adds Immune to Mind Spells
    • new cute - Being disarmed by the girl's infectious cuteness (a "cutie"), male humanoids can miss with a probability of 20%.
    • update wood_hint - Resistant to Physical Damage. Suffers only 40% of physically resisted damage from arrows. Not as vulnerable to Fire as plants (125% to 150% Damage). Immune to Mind spells.
    • new entangle - When attacking, the creature has a 50% chance to "entangle" a level 1-4 enemy troop. Entangled troops cannot move for 3 turns.
    • update acid_sprays_hint - It discharges an Acid Spray within the area of 3 cells, which burns all in its reach. An enemy has no ability to retaliate. The alchemist receives some of the bonuses which apply to archers.
    • new noble_beast (Noble Beast) - The Bears' nobility and ferocity inspire Barbarians. Barbarian Morale increased +2.
    • new primal_link (Primal Link) - The Barbarians' primal instincts encourages beasts (bears, wolves, and hyenas) to fight more ferociously. Beast Morale increased +2.
    • new thorn_commander (Thorn Monarch) - The presence of the Royal Thorn increases the Morale of all thorns +3.
    • new forest_spirit (Spirit of the Forest) - The Ents' mystical spirit strengthens any Royal Thorns in the Army. Royal Thorn Morale +2.
    • new pack_leader (Leader of the Pack) - The presence of the Werewolf Elf increases the Morale of wolves +1.
    • update phantom_hint - Immune to Physical and Poison Damage (20% Damage), Vulnerable to Magic (200% Damage), and can pass through barriers.
    • update plant_hint - Plants have no Intellect or living flesh, and they have the following features:
      • Vulnerable to Fire (175% to 200% Damage)
      • Immune to Poison (20% Damage)
      • Immune to Mind spells and some other spells.
    • update stone_hint - Stone creature, animated by magic. It is slow, but is Resistant to Fire and Physical Damage (50% Damage), Immune to Poison (20% damage) and suffers only 20% of physically resisted damage from arrows. In addition, is Immune to Mind Spells, and to spells of healing and resurrection.
    • update ice_hint - Being created from ice, the Ice Ball is immune to damage from Physical and Poison Attacks (20% damage), cannot bleed, be stunned, shocked, or poisoned, and takes increased damage from Fire (150% damage), but cannot be burned.
  • eng_units_specials.lng
    • new difficulty bonuses
    • new special_summon_bonus
    • grammar
    • holy rage dynamic hint - This hint's values are now autogenerated.
    • new charge - horseman's new charge ability.
    • update to cast_bear - This ability's power is now based on unit's leadership.
    • update to dryad_thorn - This ability's power is now based on unit's leadership.
    • update to elf_song - This ability now also effects allied plants.
    • new rooted (Tap Tree of Life) - Allows the Ent to tap into the power of the Tree of Life rooting it to the ground, which prevents it from moving; however, the Ent receives the following bonuses:
      • Resist All: +25%
      • Health: +100%
      • The Tree of Life completely heals and removes all negative effects from the Ent at the beginning of its turn.
      • Duration: 3 turns.
      • Once this ability is used, it cannot be used again for the remainder of the combat; however, once it expires, it grants the Ent the ability to run.
    • new summonplant1 - Calls upon the Tree of Life to summon a plant troop of level 1-4 to its aid. Total Leadership of the summoned plant troop is 30-50% of Leadership.
    • new summonplant2 - Calls upon the Tree of Life to summon a plant troop of level 4-5 to its aid. Total Leadership of the summoned plant troop is 35-55% of Leadership.
    • update to fire_shot - This attack can now cause burning.
    • update to Sowing - This ability's power is now based on unit's leadership.
    • update to Germination - This ability's power is now based on unit's leadership.
    • new Gift of Life - the new Thorn-Hunter & Thorn Warrior ability.
    • new Sowing -> Gift of Life - These are the names, headers, and hints for the new ability. Use of this ability enables Gift of Life.
    • update Drain - This ability's number of attacking spells is now autogenerated.
    • new lump_bleeding - Zerock's Smashing Sword can now cause bleeding.
    • new sw_no_plants - There are no allied plants in neighboring cells to give life!
  • eng_windows.lng - This updates the difficulty level hints when starting a new game. Unfortunately, the LUA script engine is not started by this point so you have to manually change the values to match those in LOGIC.TXT.
  • templates.lng
    • new wife and kid hints - These new templates autogenerate the wife and chlidren bonus hints.
    • new info… - These are new info labels for boys and girls.
    • new colors
    • new special ability templates - These are new templates for the new special abilities.
    • new spirit labels
      • dam=… - New damage spirit label.
      • res_all=… - New resist all spirit label.
      • ap=… - New action points spirit label.
      • init=… - New initiative spirit label.
    • charges= - New color for charges
    • new colors
    • new spell templates

I apologize if some of these are a little vague - as you can see there are a lot of changes to the *.LNG files and so some of the listed changes values will be listed when I do the *.TXT files. Also if you see _desc or [value_in_brackets] I've simply pasted the stuff from the *.LNG file so you can get an idea how it is laid out in the hint description.

Once again feedback and comments are encouraged. I'll work on the *.TXT file changes next - hopefully get that out in a week or so...

/C\/C\

Click here for the *.ATOM change list
Click here for the *.TXT change list

Great job with this mod, and with changed files Matt.
Couple questions :
1) skill.txt is for defining parameters for lvling up skill
eng_skill.lng is for text description in hero screen in game
skills.lua is for skill mechanics right ? I aks because in AP/CW there some really weird things in skill.lua file, and i have no idea how to change how skill work in game. Changing eng_skill and skill.txt is no prob, but when i start game there are no some of changes i added in my files
2) Glory is it necessary to add every unit for -lds% ? Or is it possible to add strings form special_params.txt, example sp_lead_orc (all orcs listed in special_params.txt file), sp_lead_demon all demon units, etc. I like your idea for this skill, this way it`s useful during all game, not just in first 10 hero lvls so i wanted to add it to AP/CW.
3) what files i need to add in mod folder to get that unit in game ? I tried to add champion unit form adventure mod for AP to Red sands, but every way i try some errors report :-(. Is there any more files for units then this : champion.atom , champion.dds , champion.lua ?
4) i also wanted to add some new spells but got stuck after changing spells.txt. Idea was to make spells like hell breath, just to bonus poison dmg, and %chance for poisoning to help players against dragons/demons. What else i need to change ? i see in your spells all translated to eng which is great, but here are my problems - How to add new slot for spell in spell book (must i delete some existing , or will it add it self somehow ?:-) , Adding png files for spell in book, for scroll for shops, and for effect(poisoned during battle) anything else ? ,
spell_effect.lua , spells.lua , spells.txt , spells_common.lua , spells_hint , spells_power.lua do i have to changed all this files to add my spell or ...?
if you can give some advice thx in advance :-)

Good questions!
 

Unfortunately, it is not so cut and dry as this. This is part of a frustration that I had when I was working on my mod, but really here is what you can do with each file:

SKILLS.TXT - this file not only defines the level up parameters that you mention, but you can also put the fight bonuses here. Everything except morale, that is. So if you look at ITEMS.TXT you'll see that there is a fight{} section and a mods{} section for most items. The fight{} section is for applying bonuses to units during combat and the mods{} section is for bonuses inside and outside of combat. SKILLS.TXT, unfortunately, does not implement the mods{} part so you can only put fight bonuses in SKILLS.TXT except for morale bonuses! Even though items can have morale bonuses defined in ITEMS.TXT, SKILLS.TXT will ignore any morale bonuses you put there. They have to go in MORALE.TXT. I had to figure all this out. So SKILLS.TXT is both for parameters shown on the skill tree screen and for directly applying fight bonuses to your units (and negatives to enemy units for that matter).

What is neat about this, though, is that I took the skill tree bonuses and made an enemy skill tree when I was modifying the enemy heroes such that they have fight bonuses implemented such that they give bonuses to certain of their units and also negatives to your units. For example, certain enemy heroes have -1 speed to all your units or, for example, Xeona has a special Destroyer Skill that is -50 Fire Resistance to all your units when you fight her!

ENG_SKILLS.LNG - you are 100% right about this. What is important to note about any of the *.LNG files is that they are governed by TEMPLATES.LNG. The templates file is what takes [param4] for example in a *.LNG file and either applies a label or calls an LUA function generator to parse what "param4" means. This gives great power in being able to generate bonuses that are dynamically generated (like, for example, the new percent bonuses for units with attacks that cause burning). You can always add new templates to TEMPLATES.LNG to generate a value. The only issue is that certain King's Bounty libraries (i.e. Attack, AU, Logic, etc.) are not available all the time and so you are limited by when they are available. I've learned a lot about the libraries, but since most the the documentation and information is in Russian there are still a lot of questions I have about them.

SKILLS.LUA - this file is for anything that can't be accomplished with the other two files. You are only limited by what the LUA script engine can do. This is what makes modding so much fun - the fact that you can change game mechanics like you mentioned, but it really goes further. You also have access to the King's Bounty Libraries and if a library is available, then you can use it. Typically Logic and Obj. are available from the functions inside SKILLS.LUA. Here is the (English translated) website for the King's Bounty Libraries: http://translate.googleusercontent.c...cVb1S9FDIBT-8Q

I'm still learning a lot about these libraries, but need to learn more about the tags and how to make libraries available for functions as I couldn't access certain libraries when I wanted to - probably because I didn't understand how the tags worked.

Unfortunately, with The Legend, yes. You are right about the race and unit category bonuses, but the problem is that if you want to have a bonus that, say, decreases leadership of humans 10% and then you want to have another bonus that decreases bowman leadership 15%, they will not stack unless you do them individually. I actually think this is a bug in The Legend and I had to deal with this as I was doing the group and individual leadership requirement bonuses. In the end, I had to make a leadership bonus for every unit (or I used groups if I thought that I'd never need to select an individual unit from that group) in SPECIAL_PARAMS.TXT such that I could have bonuses that apply a leadership reduction to groups of units (by giving the bonus to each individual unit in that group) and then to individual units. This is how I can have Mirabella, for example, give a leadership reduction to all humans and then have individual human unit leadership reduction bonuses.

They may have fixed this in AP/CW, but I doubt it since no one probably knew about it.

This implementation was actually a fall-back plan as I really simply wanted Glory to give the +Leadership bonus and then also a +Percentage Leadership bonus. But, since the mods{} bonus functionality is not implemented in SKILLS.TXT, I tried to do this in the LUA. Unfortunately, though, I could not figure out how to give a percentage bonus for leadership (like some of the original babies had) from the LUA function. So in the end, I did the leadership reduction thing instead. Maybe there is a way to do it, but I couldn't figure it out.

I'm not sure who the champion is, but I think there is an example in the mod forum where someone added some new units. I did a quick look, I think Army of Darkness may be a good example mod to download and look how they did it.

I have not tried to add any new units, but from what I understand (I think the Crossworlds Editor documentation might provide some insight here, too):

1. You need to add the *.ATOM that you mention
2. If your new unit has special abilities or features, they are added to either: SPECIAL_ATTACKS.LUA or UNIT_FEATURES.LUA. What constitues a special or feature is a little bit blurry, but it really doesn't matter which file it goes in so long as you pick one.
3. If your new unit has attacks that create side effects, you may have to add its effect to EFFECTS.TXT. The new Ent / Ancient Ent Entangle is a good ability to study for this.
4. Either have it use an existing animation or make your own
5. Create a PNG for it. You do not have to add it to a DDS like with The Legend because AP/CW both support PNG natively.
6. If your new unit has new abilities, you'll have to create PNG's for the icons as well. Each ability needs 5 pictures: 1) Normal, 2) On Mouse, 3) On Click, 4) On Disable, and 5) A small version of the normal for when looking at a unit's info card.
7. If your new unit creates side effects, then you will need a picture for that, too (PNG).
8. Edit the embryos to allow the game to generate the unit when starting a new game - Army of Darkness might be a good mod to study for this
9. There may be more, but I think that's what you'd have to do.

I have not added a new spell, but changed one. As far as I know, you should be able to make a new spell by:

1. SPELLS.TXT - all spells are defined here, so your new spell needs to be added here.
2. ENG_SPELLS.LNG - all spell descriptions are here and so your new spell needs a description to go here.
3. SPELLS.LUA - all spells use an LUA script function that determines the spell's behavior and so your new spell needs a function for it to go here.
4. SPELLS_POWER.LUA - most spells have a function here that computes the spell's power. Also SPELLS_HINT.LUA can call the spell's power function so that it can display the spell's information.
5. SPELLS_HINT.LUA - as mentioned above typically calls the spell's power function that resides inside SPELLS_POWER.LUA to get the spell's parameters to display in the text hint.
6. TEMPLATES.LNG - if you are going to have a new description, the spell's parameter templates will have to be added here in the appropriate section for spell templates.
7. SPELLS_COMMON.LUA - this file contains unit select functions for a spell. So you may not need to edit this file unless you want to use a unit selection criteria that doesn't exist.
8. SPELL_EFFECTS.LUA - this file contains spell effects that are caused by the spell. For example, Flame Arrow, Fire Ball, and Fire Rain all cause burning. The burning effect function is located here.

You may have to edit other files as well, but these are the most common for covering a spell. What you would really need to do is look at one of the spells in SPELLS.TXT and see what scripts it uses, what pictures, etc. and use it as a template for creating you're new spell. As far as the icons are concerned, you would have to generate a new PNG (I guess you don't really need to create a DDS file since individual PNG's are supported in AP/CW) for the spell picture if you didn't use one already in the game. Then, just like with the new unit, you would need to edit the embryos to allow the game to generate that new spell.

Once again, I haven't done this so you may need to do some more research, but this should at least get you started.

Okay, those were some good questions - that's about all I can provide right now. By the way, this is the kind of stuff I want to put into my modding guide if I ever get around to creating it.

/C\/C\

Cool. I can't wait to give this a try! Adding something to the Bone Dragon's attack would probably be a decent idea, since they're so brittle they barely qualify as dragons.

Too bad the landscape editor isn't as good as it could be... Anyway, the mod is working now. The changes in levelup are welcome, now the choices are more equal. The hero becomes stronger, too.

*.TXT New Files and Changes List
 

Okay, here's the *.TXT files new files and changes list. The list is a bit technical, but serves a bit also as a little self-tutorial on modding showing that for every Descriptive name there is also a code name associated with it. Also it shows the parameter style of certain files.

Text Files - *.TXT
------------------

• New Files:
  • diana_babies.txt - this file contains the list wife's babies and their bonuses.
  • feanora_babies.txt - this file contains the list wife's babies and their bonuses.
  • gerda_babies.txt - this file contains the list wife's babies and their bonuses.
  • mirabella_babies.txt - this file contains the list wife's babies and their bonuses.
  • neoka_babies.txt - this file contains the list wife's babies and their bonuses.
  • orcelyn_babies.txt - this file contains the list wife's babies and their bonuses.
  • rina_babies.txt - this file contains the list wife's babies and their bonuses.
  • xeona_babies.txt - this file contains the list wife's babies and their bonuses.
• Changed Files:
  • arena.txt - exptable=... added levels 31-46 to the spirit levels as well as made the delta-delta between level increases consistent (table wasn't consistent at a few levels before). I doubt if you can actually make it to level 46, but you might if you play the Warrior.
  • config.txt
    • spell_power_config - there are new parameters identified below.
      • mod=7 - this is the modulus of the spell increase per mod intellect
      • inc=10 - this is the percent increase per mod intellect
      • mod_limit=4 - this is a lower limit on how low the intellect may be modified for computing the intellect spell power increase
      • inc_limit=5 - this is a lower limit on how much the increase percent can be modified
      • den_scholar=2 - This divides the mod bonus parameter count value by this value for HOMM3 babies with the scholar skill.
      • spell_level_min_limit = 1 - This is the minimum spell level for enemy heroes.
      • spell_level_max_limit = 3 - This is the maximum spell level for enemy heroes.
      • level_inc_elevel = 10 - This divides into the enemy hero's level or intellect to determine their spell levels (via math.ceil).
    • hero_level_up_den - this is a new section with parameters identified below.
      • stat_den = 15 - This value is used to divide into a hero's level to determine when a stat increases. See LOGIC_HERO.LUA.
      • limit_den = 10 - This value is used to divide into a hero's level to determine when a limit increases. See LOGIC_HERO.LUA.
  • effects.txt: new "effect_entangle" - this contains the new "effect_entangle" effect and its pertinent parameters.
  • hero.txt
    • exptable=… - change to Hero's Experience Table - made the delta-delta between levels more consistent (a few levels were not consistent).
    • Warrior
      • Rage +10 - starting rage is now 30.
      • skill_open +rage_control - The skill "rage_control" is added to the starting Warrior's skill list.
      • army= - Change to the Warrior's starting army list: 4 Bowmen, 6 Swordsmen, 4 Guardsmen
      • level_up changes
    • Paladin
      • mana +5 - starting mana is now 20.
      • rage +5 - starting rage is now 20.
      • skill_open +glory - The skill "glory" is added to a starting Paladin's skill list.
      • army= - Change to the Paladin's starting army list: 7 Priests, 7 Guardmen, 3 Inquisitors
      • level_up changes
    • Mage
      • mana +10 - starting mana is now 30.
      • skills_open +alchemist - The skill "alchemist" is added to a starting Mage's skill list.
      • army= - Change to the Mage's starting army list: 2 Priests, 1 Inquisitor, 1 Archmage
      • spell_fire_ball=-2 - Mage starts with 2 Fire Ball scrolls.
      • spell_defenseless=1 - Mage starts with learned Helplessness.
      • spell_fire_arrow=1 - Mage starts with learned Fire Arrow.
      • level_up changes
  • items.txt
    • diplomat_sign: sp_gain_power_pacifism - Changed the name of sp_spell_peace to that shown to make it consistent with the spell name.
    • gryphon_banner: sp_lead_unit_griffin - Changed the name of sp_lead_griffin to that shown to make it consistent with unit leadership bonus names.
    • mirror_shield: sp_gain_power_pain_mirror - Changed the name of sp_spell_mirror to that shown to make it consistent with the spell name.
    • adept_staff: sp_gain_power_lightning - Changed the name of sp_lightning to that shown to make it consistent with the spell name.
    • arhmage_staff: sp_gain_power_lightning - Changed the name of sp_lightning to that shown to make it consistent with the spell name.
    • hammer_kingtorn: sp_lead_unit… - Changed the name sp_lead_dwarf to the individual units so that the bonus works correctly.
    • shield_mifril: sp_lead_unit… - Changed the name sp_lead_dwarf to the individual units so that the bonus works correctly.
    • demetrios1: sp_lead_unit… - Changed the name sp_lead_demon to the individual units so that the bonus works correctly.
    • demetrios2: sp_lead_unit… - Changed the name sp_lead_demon to the individual units so that the bonus works correctly.
    • demetrios3: sp_lead_unit… - Changed the name sp_lead_demon to the individual units so that the bonus works correctly.
    • set_knight: sp_lead_unit… - Changed the name sp_lead_warrior to the individual units so that the bonus works correctly.
  • logic.txt
    • features=… - added wood and cutie to the list of features.
    • difficulty_k
      • eunit=… - New enemy unit statistic scaler for difficulty_k.
      • minstatinc=… - New minimum enemy unit statistic increase for difficulty_k.
      • emanaregen=… - New enemy hero mana regen based on percent mana limit for difficulty_k.
      • ehlvldbc=… - New enemy hero level they need to get +1 spell cast per round for difficulty_k.
      • ehmanadbc=… - New enemy hero mana limit they need to get for +1 spell cast per round for difficulty_k.
      • roundmrgk1 - New round at which mana_rage_gain_k goes to 1/2
      • roundmrgk2 - New round at which mana_rage_gain_k goes to 1/4
      • roundmrgk3 - New round at which mana_rage_gain_k goes to 0
      • roundehero - New rounds to add to mana_rage_gain_k when fighting enemy heroes
      • roundtower - New rounds to add to mana_rage_gain_k when fighting gremlin towers
      • roundboss - New rounds to add to mana_rage_gain_k when fighting bosses
    • ehero_max_spells=… - New parameter that is used to set the maximum spells an enemy hero selects from for auto casting their spells. On slower computers, setting this to a lower value may increase performance.
  • morale.txt
    • The skill "shot_commander" gives +1 morale to ranged projectile units at level 3.
    • The skill "inquisition" gives +1 morale to Priests and Inquisitors at level 1.
    • Werewolf Elves and Werewolves give +1 morale to Wolves.
    • Ents and Ancient Ents give +2 morale to Royal Thorns.
    • Royal Thorns give +3 morale to Thorns and Thorn Warriors.
    • Barbarians and Berserkers give +2 morale to all Bears, Hyenas, and Wolves.
    • All Bears give +2 morale to all Barbarians.
    • The skill "megamage" gives +1 morale to all mages at level 3.
    • The skill "tolerance" gives +1 morale to all units (except the undead) at level 2.
  • skills.txt - note that the section names are spelled correctly (like traning really doesn't have the "i" so this is particurly important when use search functions) and that virtually all skills have had their rune requirements updated.
    • traning (Training):
      • script = skill_traning - This skill now includes a function call to increase the hero's abilities.
      • Level 1| pars=+1,+2,+5%,2 - The skill "traning" now has 4 parameters: 1) +Hero Attack, 2) +Unit Attack / Defense, 3) +Unit Krit, 4) Applies to 1-Unit Level.
      • Level 1| fight {…} - Adds fight bonuses for all Units <= Level 3: 1) +param2 Attack, 2) +param2 Defense, 3) +param3% Krit
      • Level 2| pars=+2,+3,+15%,3 - The skill "traning" now has 4 parameters: 1) +Hero Attack, 2) +Unit Attack / Defense, 3) +Unit Krit, 4) Applies to 1-Unit Level.
      • Level 2| fight {…} - Adds fight bonuses for all Units <= Level 4: 1) +param2 Attack, 2) +param2 Defense, 3) +param3% Krit
      • Level 3| pars=+3,+4,+30%,4 - The skill "traning" now has 4 parameters: 1) +Hero Attack, 2) +Unit Attack / Defense, 3) +Unit Krit, 4) Applies to 1-Unit Level.
      • Level 3| fight {…} - Adds fight bonuses for all Units <= Level 5: 1) +param2 Attack, 2) +param2 Defense, 3) +param3% Krit
    • rage_control (Rage Control):
      • Level 1| pars=+5 - Parameter update
      • Level 2| pars=+15 - Parameter update
    • start_defense (Combat Readiness):
      • script = skill_start_defense - This skill now includes a function call to increase the hero's abilities.
      • Level 1| pars=10%,+1 - The skill "start_defense" now has 2 parameters: 1) +Physical Resistance, 2) +Hero Defense
      • Level 2| pars=20%,+2 - The skill "start_defense" now has 2 parameters: 1) +Physical Resistance, 2) +Hero Defense
      • Level 3| pars=40%,+3 - The skill "start_defense" now has 2 parameters: 1) +Physical Resistance, 2) +Hero Defense
    • spirit_master (Master of Spirits):
      • Level 1| pars=5% - Parameter update
      • Level 2| pars=15% - Parameter update
    • shot_commander (Ranged Specialist):
      • Level 1| pars=-5%,+5%,+10% - The skill "shot_commander" now has 3 parameters: 1) -Leadership Requirement, 2) +Health%, 3) +Krit%
      • Level 1| fight {…} - Adds fight bonuses to projectile units: 1) Attack/Defense: +Unit Level, 2) Krit: +Param3, 3) Health: +Param2
      • Level 2| pars=-10%,+10%,+20% - The skill "shot_commander" now has 3 parameters: 1) -Leadership Requirement, 2) +Health%, 3) +Krit%
      • Level 2| fight {…} - Adds fight bonuses to projectile units: 1) Attack/Defense: +Unit Level, 2) Krit: +Param3, 3) Health: +Param2, 4) Initiative: +1
      • Level 3| pars=-15%,+15%,+30% - The skill "shot_commander" now has 3 parameters: 1) -Leadership Requirement, 2) +Health%, 3) +Krit%
      • Level 3| fight {…} - Adds fight bonuses to projectile units: 1) Attack/Defense: +Unit Level, 2) Krit: +Param3, 3) Health: +Param2, 4) Initiative: +1, Morale: +1 (in MORALE.TXT)
    • brutality (Frenzy):
      • Level 1| pars=+1 - Parameter update
      • Level 2| pars=+3 - Parameter update
    • iron_fist (Iron Fist):
      • Level 1| pars=-5%,+5%,+1,+10 - The skill "iron_fist" now has 4 parameters: 1) -Leadership Requirement, 2) +Health%, 3) +Attack, and 4) +Rage
      • Level 1| fight {…} - Adds fight bonuses to warrior units: 1) Attack / Defense: +Unit Level, 2) Health: +Param2
      • Level 2| pars=-10%,+10%,+3,+30,+20% - The skill "iron_fist" now has 5 parameters: 1) -Leadership Requirement, 2) +Health%, 3) +Attack, 4) +Rage, and 5) +Krit%
      • Level 2| fight {…} - Adds fight bonuses to warrior units: 1) Attack / Defense: +Unit Level, 2) Health: +Param2, 3) Krit: +Param5
      • Level 3| pars=-15%,+15%,+6,+60,+30% - The skill "iron_fist" now has 5 parameters: 1) -Leadership Requirement, 2) +Health%, 3) +Attack, 4) +Rage, and 5) +Krit%
      • Level 3| fight {…} - Adds fight bonuses to warrior units: 1) Attack / Defense: +Unit Level, 2) Health: +Param2, 3) Krit: +Param5
    • rush (Onslaught):
      • Level 1| pars=+1,+0 - The skill "rush" now has 2 parameters: 1) +Init, 2) +Speed
      • Level 2| pars=+1,+1 - The skill "rush" now has 2 parameters: 1) +Init, 2) +Speed
      • Level 3| pars=+2,+2 - The skill "rush" now has 2 parameters: 1) +Init, 2) +Speed
    • dark_commander (Dark Commander):
      • Level 1| pars=+2 - Parameter update
      • Level 1| unit=… - The "dark_commander" skill now increases the abilities of all "evil" troops.
      • Level 2| pars=+4,+1 - Parameter update
      • Level 2| unit=… - The "dark_commander" skill now increases the abilities of all "evil" troops.
      • Level 3| pars=+8,+1,+1 - The skill "dark_commander" now has 3 parameters: 1) +Attack, 2) +Init, 3) +Speed
      • Level 3| unit=… - The "dark_commander" skill now increases the abilities of all "evil" troops.
      • Level 3| filter {…} - The "dark_commander" skill now increases speed at level 3.
    • explorer (Scouting):
      • script = skill_explorer - This skill now includes a function call to increase the hero's abilities.
      • Level 3| pars=+1 - The skill "explorer" now adds +1 Intellect at level 3.
    • holy_rage (Holy Anger):
      • script=skill_holy_rage - This skill now includes a function call to increase the hero's abilities.
      • Level 1| pars=+5,1,+5 - The skill "holy_rage" now has 3 parameters: 1) +Attack vs Undead & Demons / +Krit to Phoenix 2) +Init / Speed to Phoenix; 3) +Order Spell Power, +Attack / Defense / Damage / Health to Phoenix;
      • Level 1| fight {…} - Adds to the Damage, Attack, Defense, Health, Krit, Init, and Speed of the Phoenix.
      • Level 2| pars=+15,2+10 - The skill "holy_rage" now has 3 parameters: 1) +Attack vs Undead & Demons / +Krit to Phoenix 2) +Init / Speed to Phoenix; 3) +Order Spell Power, +Attack / Defense / Damage / Health to Phoenix;
      • Level 2| fight {…} - Adds to the Damage, Attack, Defense, Health, Krit, Init, and Speed of the Phoenix.
      • Level 3| pars=+30,3,+15 - The skill "holy_rage" now has 3 parameters: 1) +Attack vs Undead & Demons / +Krit to Phoenix 2) +Init / Speed to Phoenix; 3) +Order Spell Power, +Attack / Defense / Damage / Health to Phoenix;
      • Level 3| fight {…} - Adds to the Damage, Attack, Defense, Health, Krit, Init, and Speed of the Phoenix.
    • glory (Glory):
      • Level 1| pars=+200,-2% - The skill "glory" now has 2 parameters: 1) +Leadership, 2) -Leadership Requirement
      • Level 2| pars=+500,-5% - The skill "glory" now has 2 parameters: 1) +Leadership, 2) -Leadership Requirement
      • Level 3| pars=+1000,-10% - The skill "glory" now has 2 parameters: 1) +Leadership, 2) -Leadership Requirement
    • learning (Learning):
      • Level 1| pars=+5% - Parameter update
      • Level 3| pars=+30% - Parameter update
    • charm (Trophies):
      • Level 1| pars=5% - Parameter update
      • Level 2| pars=15% - Parameter update
    • trading (Trade):
      • Level 1| pars=20%,10% - Parameter update
      • Level 2| pars=50%,30% - Parameter update
      • Level 3| pars=100%,60% - Parameter update
    • diplomacy (Diplomacy):
      • Level 2| pars=15% - Parameter update
      • Level 3| pars=30% - Parameter update
    • holy_knight (Keeper of the Light):
      • Level 1| pars=+20%,+10% - Parameter update
      • Level 2| pars=+50%,+25% - Parameter update
      • Level 3| pars=+100%,+50% - Parameter update
    • tolerance (Tolerance): Level 2| pars=+1 - The skill "tolerance" gives +1 morale to all units (except the undead) at level 2.
    • rune_stone (Runic Stone):
      • Level 1| pars=+5,+1 - The skill "rune_stone" now has the parameters: +runes and +defense
      • Level 2| pars=+10,+2 - The skill "rune_stone" now has the parameters: +runes and +defense
      • Level 3| pars=+15,+3 - The skill "rune_stone" now has the parameters: +runes and +defense
    • inquisition (Inquisition):
      • script = skill_inquisition - This Skill now includes a function call to increase the hero's abilities.
      • Level 1| pars=-10%,+10,+1,+20 - The Skill "inquisition" now has 4 parameters (Unit Bonuses Apply to Priest & Inquisitor): 1) -Leadership Requirement, 2) +Mana / Rage / Health, 3) +Intellect / Init / Speed / Morale, 4) +Krit
      • Level 1| fight {…} - This adds fight bonuses to Priests and Inquisitors: 1) Attack / Defense: +Unit Level, 2) Krit: +Param4, 3) Health: +Param2, 4) Init / Speed: +Param3
    • wizdom (Wisdom):
      • Level 1| pars=+5,+5 - Parameter update
      • Level 2| pars=+15,+15 - Parameter update
      • Level 3| pars=+30,+30 - Parameter update
    • alchemist (Alchemy):
      • Level 1| pars=10 - Parameter update
      • Level 2| pars=25 - Parameter update
    • meditation (Meditation):
      • Level 1| pars=+20% - Parameter update
      • Level 2| pars=+50% - Parameter update
    • concentration (Concentration):
      • Level 1| pars=2 - Parameter update
      • Level 2| pars=6 - Parameter update
      • Level 3| pars=12 - Parameter update
    • healer (Healer):
      • deps=order,dist - The "healer" skill now requires the skills "order" and "dist".
      • Level 1| deps=1,1 - Update to level requirement for dependent skills.
      • Level 1| pars=+5%,+2% - The Skill "healer" now has 2 parameters: 1) +Spell Power, 2) +Unit Health
      • Level 1| fight {…} - This adds a fight bonus to unit health
      • Level 2| deps=1,1 - Update to level requirement for dependent skills.
      • Level 2| pars=+15%,+5% - The Skill "healer" now has 2 parameters: 1) +Spell Power, 2) +Unit Health
      • Level 2| fight {…} - This adds a fight bonus to unit health
      • Level 3| deps=1,1 - Update to level requirement for dependent skills.
      • Level 3| pars=+30%,+10% - The Skill "healer" now has 2 parameters: 1) +Spell Power, 2) +Unit Health
      • Level 3| fight {…} - This adds a fight bonus to unit health
    • megamage (Archmage):
      • Level 1| pars=-5%,+1,+5% - The Skill "megamage" now has 3 parameters: 1) -Leadership Requirement, 2) +1 Intellect, 3) +Health
      • Level 1| fight {…} - This adds fight bonuses to mages: 1) Attack / Defense: +Unit Level, 2) Health: +Param3
      • Level 2| pars=-10%,+2,+10%,+20% - The Skill "megamage" now has 4 parameters: 1) -Leadership Requirement, 2) +1 Intellect, 3) +Health, 4) +Krit
      • Level 2| fight {…} - This adds fight bonuses to mages: 1) Attack / Defense: +Unit Level, 2) Health: +Param3, 3) Krit: +Param4
      • Level 3| pars=-15%,+3,+15%,+30% - The Skill "megamage" now has 4 parameters: 1) -Leadership Requirement, 2) +1 Intellect, 3) +Health, 4) +Krit
      • Level 3| fight {…} - This adds fight bonuses to mages: 1) Attack / Defense: +Unit Level, 2) Health: +Param3, 3) Krit: +Param4
    • necromancy (Neromancy):
      • script = skill_necromancy - This Skill now includes a function call to increase the hero's abilities.
      • Level 1| pars=10-20%,skeleton,-5%,+5% - The Skill "necromancy" now has 4 parameters: 1) Raise Percent Range, 2) Undead Type, 3) -Leadership Requirement, 4) Undead +Defense%
      • Level 1| fight {…} - This adds fight bonuses to the Undead: 1) Defense: +Param4, 2) Magic Resistance: +Param4, 3) Magic Damage: +1
      • Level 2| pars=30-50%,zombie,-10%,+15% - The Skill "necromancy" now has 4 parameters: 1) Raise Percent Range, 2) Undead Type, 3) -Leadership Requirement, 4) Undead +Defense% / +Health%
      • Level 2| fight {…} - This adds fight bonuses to the Undead: 1) Defense / Health: +Param4, 2) Magic Resistance: +Param4, 3) Magic Damage: +2
      • Level 3| pars=60-100%,ghost,-15%,+30% - The Skill "necromancy" now has 4 parameters: 1) Raise Percent Range, 2) Undead Type, 3) -Leadership Requirement, 4) Undead +Defense% / +Health% / Krit%
      • Level 3| fight {…} - This adds fight bonuses to the Undead: 1) Defense / Health / Krit: +Param4, 2) Magic Resistance: +Param4, 3) Magic Damage: +3
    • high_magic (Higher Magic):
      • script=skill_hi_magic - This Skill now includes a function call to increase the hero's abilities.
      • Level 1| pars=1,100%,+1,+10 - The Skill "high_magic" now has parameters: +1 spell casts for rounds, +not used, +intellect, and +mana
      • Level 2| pars=3,100%,+3,+30 - The Skill "high_magic" now has parameters: +1 spell casts for rounds, +not used, +intellect, and +mana
      • Level 3| pars=6,100%,+6,+60 - The Skill "high_magic" now has parameters: +1 spell casts for rounds, +not used, +intellect, and +mana
    • destroyer (Destroyer):
      • Level 1| pars=+10% - Parameter update
      • Level 2| pars=+25% - Parameter update
  • special_params.txt
    • sp_lead_unit… - These bonuses are the new leadership requirement bonuses for each unit and sometimes a pair of units if they are very similar and of the same level.
    • sp_lead_(race) - These bonuses are the old race bonuses. They have been left here, but the sp_lead_unit… bonuses must be used otherwise the leadership requirements won't be computed properly.
    • sp_lead_(group) - These bonuses are the old group bonuses. They have been left here, but the sp_lead_unit… bonuses must be used otherwise the leadership requirements won't be computed properly.
    • sp_add_... - These bonuses add to value of a unit skill
    • sp_duration… - These bonuses add to the druation of a unit skill
    • sp_gain_... - These bonsus scale the value of a unit skill
    • sp_add_damage... - These bonuses add to the damage of bless and weakness.
    • sp_add_infliction... - These bonuses add to the infliction chance for those spells with inflictions.
    • sp_add_penalty... - These bonuses add to a spell's penalty effect.
    • sp_add_periphery_damage... - These bonuses add to the periphery damage of a spell.
    • sp_add_power… - These bonuses add to spell's power.
    • sp_add_(type)_special… - These bonuses add to the power of a (type) of special attack that the unit uses (i.e. shock, krit, power, etc.).
    • sp_chance_effect… - These bonuses add to the chance a unit casts its special effect.
    • sp_chance_feat… - These bonuses add to the chance a unit casts its feature.
    • sp_dur_mod - This bonus is used to modify the modulus for spell power increase per modulus intellect.
    • sp_duration… - These bonuses add to the duration of a spell or effect.
    • sp_gain_infliction… - These bonuses apply a multiplicative bonus to the chance of an infliction.
    • sp_gain_penalty… - These bonuses apply a multiplicative bonus to the penalty.
    • sp_gain_periphery_damage… - These bonuses apply a multiplicative bonus to the periphery damage of a spell.
    • sp_gain_power… - These bonuses apply a multiplicative bonus to the spell's power.
    • sp_gain_(type)_special… - These bonuses apply a multiplicative bonus to the special's power; (type) is shock, krit, etc.
    • sp_lvl_inc… - These bonuses apply an additive bonus to the base level damage of a spell.
    • sp_power_effect… - These bonuses apply an additive bonus to the percent power of an effect.
    • sp_power… - These bonuses apply various bonuses to the spell power per intellect formula.
    • sp_special_attacks… - These bonuses apply an additive bonus to the special attack of a unit.
    • sp_spell_defense - New spell bonus for defensive spells.
    • sp_kid… - These bonuses are used to allow proper computation of children bonuses due to a bug in hero_lu_item_on_body.
  • specials.txt
    • special_difficulty… - These new specials are for the new difficulty level bonuses.
    • special_summon_bonus - This is the new bonus used to apply a bonus to a summoned (phoenix & evil book) unit.
    • special_rooted - This is the new Ent's special ability.
    • feat_lump_bleeding - This is the new Bleeding effect caused by Zerock's "lump" & "quake" abilities.
  • spells.txt
    • Changes:
      • Virtually all spells have had their price, mana, and crystals updated
      • Some spells have had their spell parameters updated
      • The custom parameters of most spells were inconsistent so their names were changed to make them consistent (i.e. some used power, bonus, penalty, and special names in an inconsistent way and it was very confusing)
    • New custom spell parameters:
      • hero= - set this to 1 to have the hero's level effect the spell's power
      • holy_rage= - set this to 1 to have the skill Holy Rage effect the spell's power
      • astral= - set this to 1 to have damage type increased by spell power
      • fire= - set this to 1 to have damage type increased by spell power
      • magic= - set this to 1 to have damage type increased by spell power
      • physical= - set this to 1 to have damage type increased by spell power
      • poison= - set this to 1 to have damage type increased by spell power
      • res_fire= - Resistance type specified is increased by spell power.
      • res_magic= - Resistance type specified is increased by spell power.
      • res_physical= - Resistance type specified is increased by spell power.
      • res_poison= - Resistance type specified is increased by spell power.
    • Important Spell Changes:
      • spell_defenseless (Helplessness): script_calccells = calccells_complex_enemy - Calc cells script updated since spell is now mass at level 3.
      • spell_invisibility (Invisibility): script_calccells = calccells_all_ally_level - Calc cells script updated since spell now has a unit level requirement.
      • spell_ram (Sheep): nfeatures = magic_immunitet, pawn, boss, plant, undead, golem - The nfeatures list has been updated to include: plants, undead, and golems (none of these can be sheeped).
  • wifes.txt
    • Includes the "wife"_babies.txt files
    • Adds wife_orcelyn
    • Adds wife_diana
    • Other wives price, wife_slots, children, fight, and mods have been updated.

Okay, that's it. It is possible that some of the parameter values are now slightly different since this list was made about a month ago, but I did go through it once and attempt to update it to the latest changes.

This change list gives you a feel for where things are and how to change them. Note that morale.txt, for instance, is the file to change for all the morale bonuses. You can add a fight {morale} bonus to skills.txt, but it will not show up properly in the hero's army slots and army cards.

In skills.txt, there are the parameters that are shown in the Skill Name Description when you mouse over it and then there are also the actual bonuses to units in the fight {...} section for that skill. Unfortunately, I do not know a way to link these and so therefore since the values are in two places this possibly serves as a source of bugs if you change a value in one place, but forget to change it in the other as the values will not be the same.

Also note that I've done my best to make my work itself mod-able. You can see that I attempted to add bonuses to many facets of the game where they did not exist. The idea was to make a system that allowed people to create new items, etc. with the new bonuses I added.

Another factor I used to make changes was to make the system consistent. For certain spells, their bonus name did not match the spell name. In order to aid in the LUA script updates, I needed to make names consistent so that an LUA function only needed the spell's name to then determine if there were any bonuses for that spell.

All these go to make the fileset that I've modified its own basis for new mods. This was a lot of work to go through all the game's original files and try to make things as consistent as possible, but I think it was worth it. This should make future mods easier because you don't have to know all the name variants for a spell, its bonuses, and other effects.

Once gain, feel free to comment! The last major file group is the LUA script files. I hope to post those changes no later than a week or two from now...

/C\/C\

Click here for the *.ATOM List
Click here for the *.LNG List

This is enticing me to speed through my current game so I can give your mod a try or three. :) Nice work. I usually edit the equipment into the game that I want to play via the KBScanner, but I'll give your mod an unedited playthrough to get a better feel for the changes and the challenge involved.

Have you thought of a mod that would make all the equipment in the game available for sale during a game? Would it be hard to do?

And is your mod compatible with the KBScanner? (I'd imagine it couldn't be for the HOMM3 babies, but does it report the quest rewards, items, troops, and spells correctly?)

Interesting questions...
 

It's been a long time since I played with the KBScanner, but I think the way they designed it that it might actually work with my mod. Obviously, I discourage using the KBScanner when playing a mod (especially the first time) since it is a cheat that gives you an advantage, but I think it will use the "code" names for things if they are new - I'm not sure, though.

I can't wait to actually attach this where people can simply download and play it because I think anyone who plays it is going to have a lot of fun (especially on impossible), but we got to get through this alpha stage first. This means me getting far enough in my current game to try out all of the new stuff I've added (so I at least got to marry Orcelyn and have some babies with her and then I think I am going to make the Bone Dragon change so I got to get far enough to fight some so that I can create and debug that change plus I think I'll do a little mod tutorial as I make the change so that people can see how it works) and then it should be ready for everyone to give it a try.

So far I only have two people playtesting it (Fatt_Shade and Erkilmarl) and would love to get some more people joining the fun!

So don't be bashful - PM your email address and I'll send you the latest version!:)

/C\/C\

Spell Synergies
 

Hey, by the way, as you know I've created this project to make your computer opponent harder, but I've also improved the AI's spell casting ability somewhat.

What I haven't done that just popped into my head as I've been playing tonight is about spell synergies.

What I mean by this, is what are some of your favorite spell combinations that you like to use (i.e. your 1-2-punch so speak)?

I haven't done this with the AI spell casting, but I could give the AI a 1-2-punch with respect to if they have a certain set of spells that compliment each other, I can increase the likihood of them casting those spells in tandem (i.e. one after the other).

So let me know your favorite spell synergies and I'll think about how to get them in the game (also this would probably be a good list to try to add to the Gremlin Tower's Extensible lists).

Thanks!:)

/C\/C\

AI Improvements
 

To go along with the previous post a little bit, what are some of your dislikes about the current AI that bother you a little bit?

These have to do with the AI's use of unit abilities and you'd basically like to see improved.

What I'm thinking here is that if I get a pretty good list I can work on improving that aspect of the game as well.

I find that currently the AI is pretty decent, but I'm sure we can make improvements.

Anyway, looking forward to your comments...

/C\/C\

Improving Features
 

Okay, one last post before I go to bed.

What are some features that you'd like to see improved in the game.

One of the abilities that I'm thinking about is the fact that the AI can generate an optimal hex path for its use of the Black Dragon's Power of Fire, whereas the player cannot.

I'm not sure if I know how to do it, but I think I might be able to figure out how to allow the player to create a more complex or optimal path when using that ability.

So would people like to see improvements like this made?

If so let me know what it is and I'll see if I can figure out a way to do it...

/C\/C\

Found couple simple misses :
1) dark commander in skills.txt on 3 lvl should be pars=+8,+2,+1 (you forgot to change from original +10,+1,+1)
2) in mega mage did you plan to add more att/def per lvlup of ksill ? since now you have +2/+3/+4 att/def for units on all lvl`s. or you planed to add something more for every lvl 1st lvl att/def , 2nd lvl att/def/hp/crit and on 3rd lvl att/def/hp/crit/initiative.
3) also in megamage there is bonus +Unitlevel, what did you mean by that ?

Great catch and questions!
 

Great catch on Dark Commander, I've made the change and will provide it in the next update I send out - thanks!:grin:

Those are the type of finds that I need!

As far as Mega Mage is concerned (I use this a lot) +Unit Level means +Unit Level! So for example, Mega Maga says "Unit Attack / Defense: +Unit Level", then if it is a Priest, whose unit level is 2, then they will get Attack / Defense: +2; if it is a Necromancer then they get Attack / Defense: +4 since their unit level is 4. I use that as a short hand because it saves space.

As far as the Archmage (Mega Mage) level progressions, they get:

Level 1: Attack / Defense: +Unit Level, Health: +5%, and Leadership Requirement: -5%, while your Hero gets +1 Intellect.
Level 2: Attack / Defense: +Unit Level, Health: +10%, Critical Hit: +20%, and Leadership Requirement: -10%, while your Hero gets +2 Intellect.
Level 3: Attack / Defense: +Unit Level, Health: +15%, Critical Hit: +30%, Initiative and Morale (except Necromancers): +1, and Leadership Requirement: -15%, while your Hero gets +3 Intellect.

So I mimicked Iron Fist where the mages get boosts to some statistics and then with each successive level up they get boosts to more of their statistics, but some of the previous boosts don't change. Also here's a bit of the rationale to the rune values as well as a discussion of the level up differences:

Level 1: 0,1,2 - this gets your hero +1 Intellect and your mages a +Unit Level Attack / Defense bonus, +5% Health, and -5% Leadership Requirement. As far as the rune choice breakdowns, 1 magic rune gives +1 Intellect so then 1 mind rune + 1 magic rune give the remainder of the bonuses.
Level 2: 1,1,2 - this gets your hero another +1 to his Intellect and your mages another +5% Health and -5% Leadership Requirement. What's new is the boost to their Critical Hit: +20%. Once again, 1 magic rune gives +1 Intellect and then we have 1 of each rune that gives another 5% to Health and Leadership Requirement and then +20% to their Critical Hit.
Level 3: 1,1,2 - this gets your hero another +1 to his Intellect and your mages another +5% Health, -5% Leadership Requirement, and then another +10% to their Critical Hit (which is only a 50% increase from Level 2). Then they gain +1 Initiative and +1 Morale. Once again 1 magic rune gives +1 intellect so then we're spreading the remaining runes amongst a 50% increase in the critical hit bonus, 5% Health and Leadership Requirement, and then +1 Initiative and Morale.

Maybe that's a bit of a stretch, but if you look at the total rune cost to get to Level 3: 2,3,6, less 3 magic runes for +3 intellect: 2,3,3 you get:

Mages: Attack / Defense: +Unit Level, Health: +15%, Critical Hit: +30%, Initiative and Morale: +1, and Leadership Requirement: -15%.

That seems kind of fair for a very small set of units. That's another factor that is somewhat subjective when applying bonuses to a subset of the units is what does 1 rune do?

Also with respect to the progression of stat increases and which ones to choose first, there is a bit of subjectiveness to how important is initiative versus morale, speed, critical hit, health, attack, and defense. The prioritization of a unit's statistics is a bit difficult and depends on whether they are melee or ranged.

Here is a rough progression of a unit's statistics based on importance:

1. Morale - because it gives bonuses to attack, defense, and critical hit
2. Ranged - Initiative, Melee - Speed. For ranged, the sooner they move the better, for melee initiative doesn't help if you can't attack so speed is very important.
3. Critical Hit - hitting for twice the damage effectively doubles the size of the stack.
4. Health - more health is better no matter who you are.
5. Ranged - Speed, Melee - Initiative, Attack, Defense - this last batch of statistics are kind of a toss up and very subjective here. If you have lots of movement and are melee, then Initiative becomes much more important and probably should be a 3 as well as their Attack and Defense become a lot more important as well.

So you can see it is a bit tricky when deciding which statistic increase is most important, but since we're dealing with ranged units with the skill Archmage, you can see why I added Morale and Initiative at Level 3, Critical Hit at Level 2, and Attack / Defense and Health at Level 1.

I don't necessarily always follow this, but I'm at least mindful of this when I deviate from it.

As you think of changing the skills in AP/CW, try to come up with something like this (my ordering is my opinion so if you think differently then order the list how you see fit) to aid in helping make things more balanced.

What you're really trying to do in the end is to "mechanize" your strategies and what you think is important into your changes.

I hope that gives you a view into the thought process and the methodology of how I went about selecting which skills / statistics to increase as well as the associated bonus values and rune requirements.

/C\/C\

4) in skills.txt for necromancy you listed skeleton/zombie/ghost per skill lvl, what does it do?
5) in xyz_babies.txt kid`s bonus
filter {
belligerent=ally
}
pbonus=defense,0,6,0,-100,0,0
dbonus=
rbonus=
attack_on=
attack_off=
Missing units for +6 def bonus, Or you planed to give 6 def with every kid ?.
And why setting sp_unit_lead_archer 2 times in kid`s bonuses ? Every kid which gives -lds for some unit have it listed 2 times in mods{}. Exp galthran(first kid) gives bonus for archer/skeleton -3% lds, and then again on bottom of list -26% lds. So how much does it lower unit leadership (does it stack) ? With zombie_rina and 4 kids, you can get -34lds% for all undead (for some units even more), and with necromancy skill this can go to -50%. A bit OP ? Why does every rina kid give lds for all undead?
6) kid_voy from feanora should place to mirabela, sea battle bonus seems logical.
kid_tazar holy s...t :-)
kid_young_sandro wtf is he doing in feanora babies ???
7) diana babies
kid_ shiva why not make bonus to all draogns, instead mixing all units, and only EGD ?
kid_kalt/lacus did you plan to give 9% magic dmg, and 9% poison res? Why not same bonus. 9% magic dmg,res, and other kid 9%poison dmg/res
sp_power_inc=count,9 i guess this is bonus% for destruction skill
sp_power_mod=count,1 but what is this ???
8 ) xeona babies for kid_dace in the mods set sp_lead_unit_horseman/knight/orc2, you miss _ in those lines.
9) wives.txt for mirabela no need for human lvl 5 unit bonus. No human 5th lvl TL :-)
10) maybe scale differently -lds% for wives, for 1st lvl units 15%, 2nd/13% , 3rd/11%, 4th/9% , 5th/7% , and why feanora have lowest lds reduction ? She give bonus for so few units, at least should be useful with them :-(
11) you completely missed griffins in any wife lds reduction/stats bonus :-(
And in the end rina is seriously overpowered, all her kids give lds for all undead. Change it so every kid, gives -lds% for some unit, not all race.
Xeona also with 4 kids all unis in your army could have +40% dmg bonus and +4fire dmg which is to much.

Good comments!
 

Interesting comments!

This is in the original game and I'm not even sure if the game actually uses it, but I left it alone when modding the skill.

Here's what this means - this is very important if you're going to mod the game.

filter {...} - this means that you can make this apply to the units specified by the filter. If you do not have anything here, then this will apply to every unit on the battlefield.

Valid values:
belligerent = ally or enemy to apply bonus to
race = human, orc, etc. to apply bonus to
level = value or level <= value, etc. level of units to apply bonus to
unit = list of unit(s) to apply bonus to

pbonus=... - use this for increasing unit statistics
dbonus=... - use this for increasing unit damage
rbonus=... - use this for increasing unit resistance
attack_on= - I have not used this, but I'm guessing that you can enable certain unit's attacks with this (I'll have to experiment with this)
attack_off= - I have not used this either, but I'm guessing that you can disable certain unit's attacks with this (this could be very powerful if an enemy hero can disable certain of your unit's abilities).

Note that there are 3 values after defense, then -100, and then two 0's. Here is the meaning of this (for any statistic):

pbonus, dbonus, rbonus = stat_name, absolute, percent_current, percent_base, duration, delete_on_damage, priority

Where:

stat_name =
pbonus = attack, defense, krit, health, initiative, moral (note that there is no "e" on the end of that), hitback, and speed.
dbonus and rbonus = astral, fire, magic, physical, poison
abosulte = if you place a value here, then it is added to (or subtracted from) that statistic directly.
percent_current = if you place a value here, then it scales the current value by that percent.
percent_base = if you place a value here, then is scales the base value by that percent.
duration = how long the effect lasts, -100 means that it lasts forever.
delete_on_damage = true / false, whether to remove the modifier when the unit dies.
priority = the priority of this effect.

Reference: Attack King's Bounty Library

So in the case above, that child will apply a very modest +6% (multiply defense by 1.06) to all of your unit's defense. For example a unit with defense = 50 will have a defense = 53. I think you can see that this is a very modest bonus.

They do stack - the reason why they are listed twice is because Galthran has two separate skills that contribute to the Leadership Requirement - one applies to all Undead (which has to list each set of units separately for them to stack properly), the other just to Skeleton Warriors and Skeleton Archers.

Rina's babies will only max out at -33% Leadership Requirement for the Undead and then Rina herself is another -6%

Nonetheless, I've been thinking long and hard about this and realized that there is a possibility of getting this although it is low. How low?

2/19 * 1/18 * 1/17 * 2/16 = 0.0043% so you'd have to play 23,256 times to get the best Leadership Reduction Requirement bonus to occur just once!

So this is pretty much a non-issue if you can get this game then enjoy the rarity!

By the way, here are the other probabilities:

2/19 * 1/18 = 0.292% or 1 in 342 games for best 2 of them.
2/19 * 1/18 * 1/17 = 0.00344% or 1 in 2,907 games for best 3 of them.
or
2/19 * 1/18 * 2/17 = 0.0688% or 1 in 1.454 games for close to best 3 of them.
but
2/19 * 1/18 * 3/17 = 0.103% or 1 in 969 games for somewhere between close to best 3 of them and best 3 of them.

Also, if you're wondering, the chance of getting -12% LR to Undead from Rina babies:

13/19 * 12/18 * 11/17 * 10/16 = 18.4% or about 1 in 6 games!

I put a lot of thought into wife and baby choice. Think of the Frogus brothers. Feanora is the only wife with reptilian / amphibian blood in her so she gets all the HOMM3 Lizardmen and Troglodyte babies.

Mirabella is human and so she's only going to have human babies. I put a lot of thought into which wives have which babies and I tried to make the combinations somewhat plausible.

Tazar has Expert Armorer and Feanora's wife value is 7 so 7 * 3 = +21% Defense to all units or times 1.21. Not +21 defense (absolute) to all units like you were thinking - that'd be absurd!

By the way if you see something like that let me know because it would be wrong!

Well, to include Young Sandro in the game, I couldn't give him to Rina since she already had normal Sandro. I thought it would be neat to represent every HOMM3 Hero from the normal game to Armageddon's Blade and Shadow of Death. So 4 (okay really 5) heroes appear twice (Sandro, Haart, Gem, and Yog, but their pictures are different from the normal versions) so I didn't want to have the same baby with the same wife even though their picture was different. Young Sandro could have gone to any of the other wives, but I thought Feanora was a good candidate since she is in Marshan Swamp near the Cemetary. For Haart, since he turns into a Death Knight in HOMM3 Shadow of Death he went to Rina since she's miss Undead baby. Normal Haart is Mirabella's baby. Gem went to Diana (not much of stretch). Normal Gem is Neoka's. Young Yog is the only one kind of out of place - he's a genie (Diana has the genie babies including normal Yog) but is a Barbarian in HOMM3 with the Orc town, so I ended up giving him to Orcelyn even though he's blue-skinned because his bonuses were for Orcs. So maybe the stork picked up the wrong baby with Yog! Oh well! She says he's yours!;)

Oh yah, and I forgot about Dragon Mutare. Mutare is Gerda's baby, but for Dragon Mutare she's Xeona's! I guess you and a demoness can have a dragon baby!!! Why not? Or maybe the stork mixed up that one as well!

Mutare gives bonuses to all dragons since she becomes a Dragon in HOMM3! Shiva originally had Thunderbirds and Rocs in HOMM3. There was no equivalent unit in KB so I thought she would be good to give bonuses to EGD's (no HOMM3 Heroes give bonuses to Emerald Dragons in that game). Also, Rashka (Xeona) gives bonuses to Red Dragons (no Efreet in KB) and Kilgor (Orcelyn) (no Behemoths in KB) gives bonuses to Black Dragons.

Kalt and Lacus are PlanesWalkers in HOMM3. This wasn't too tough of a choice to decide which wife to give these heroes to because Kalt is an Ice Elemental and Lacus a Water Elemental and since Diana is a River Fairy it made sense. Both HOMM3 Heroes applied bonuses to Ice and Water Elementals. Unfortunately there are no Ice and Water Elementals in KB so I decided that they'd give bonuses to units with physical (ice) and magic (water) damage +9% and then also (water based) give resistances to physical (ice) and poison (water).

Why magic for damage and poison for resistance? Well normally I'd probably make it the same, but none of the units that Diana gives bonuses to normally have poison damage and so 0 * 1.09 = 0. So it would be useless, but Sprites, Unicorns, etc. do magic damage and so that's why.

So those are correct.

There are other PlanesWalkers as well and so the mother I picked makes sense for all those as well.

These are new bonuses that I added. These are a bit tricky with respect to balance and so we'll have to note if they are too high when playing.

The way they work is sp_power_inc is the power to add to the +10% to spell power for every 7 Intellect. So this bonus would give +19% - wow! Now the sp_power_mod is divided by two and subtracted from 7 so it would be 7-0.5=6.5. So that would be +19% to spell power for every 6.5 Intellect. That's a nice boost and babies with these stack.

Chance of getting the babies to max this out (one baby has Advanced Scholarship, the other 4 Basic)?

1/19 * 4/18 * 3/17 * 2/16 = 0.0258% or 1 out of 3,876 games to get max.
1/19 * 4/18 * 3/17 = 0.206% or 1 out of ~484 games to get the best 3 of them.
1/19 * 4/18 = 1.27% or 1 out of ~86 games to get the best 2 of them.

This is a bit borderline here with getting the best two of them. Something to consider...

Awesome - great catch there! There may be more of these so keep your eyes open for them! :)

Right, but when I move to Crossworlds, I won't have to change it! :cool:

You're wrong about Feanora's bonuses they are right between Rina's and Mirabella's / Gerda's individual unit Leadership Reduction bonuses.

Also note that there is more than simply Leadership Reduction bonuses - Feanora's kids have bonuses that apply to more areas.

You missed both Mirabella and her son Edric. Griffins get a great bonus!

Every unit is represented with a child bonus somewhere - I was very sure about this since in the end I had a few duplicates and needed to come up with a unique bonus for babies that had similar unit bonuses to prevent too much stacking.

You're wrong about this - you're not considering probability once again and the way the wives and children were designed was to give bonuses to playing a certain set of units.

I encourage you to play it and let me know what you end up with in regards to the total Undead Leadership requirement reduction from Rina's Babies. I'm guessing you'll be somewhere between -12 to -18% and if you're fortunate, you'll get 1 child with a reduction to a couple of Undead units.

Look at Feanora's baby Korbac: -27% Leadership Requirements to Dragonflies (both Lake and Fire) and +7% Defense to all units. That's 1% better than Rina's Galthran Leadership Requirement to Skeleton Warriors and Skeleton Archers and 1% better than his defense to all units. Also instead of -3 Leadership Requirements to Undead, Korbac adds +1 Initiative to all units. Which is better? -3% Leadership Requirement to Undead or +1 Initiative to all units? You'll see that Feanora's values are higher for every equivalent value of Rina's babies.

The areas I actually may need to look at are the Skill Leadership Reductions, because these have no probability - just get all the prerequisite skills and runes and you're good to go.

Probability of this happening: 4/27 * 3/26 * 2/25 * 1/24 = 0.005698% or once every ~17,550 games! Enjoy that game when it comes around!

Other probabilities:

2/27 * 1/26 * 2/25 = 0.0228% or 1 in ~4388 games
2/27 * 1/26 = 0.285% or 1 in ~351 games

By the way, the only way to know if something's overpowered is to try it out and see. As I was learning how to mod the game, I needed to shift my paradigm of thought from the original The Legend game because of how much harder I've made it. Looking at the values does not tell the complete story!

I've also perturbed the values both low and high when setting the values to get a good idea of whether something is too low or too high and have hit the sweet spot with most stuff since I've played it.

Probability is a huge player when determining whether the stacking bonuses can get out of hand and I encourage you to consider the probability for even getting two babies you'd like to get for a wife. The minimum probability of repitition for the wife with the fewest children having 2 children of your choice is a 1 in 342 chance!

Playing the game is the only way to find out for certain and I do think it is fun to have a game every now and then where you have the possibility of really good bonuses, but as you can see, only a few people will ever experience the opportunity!

Also, if you're understanding what I'm saying look at the replayability value! You will most likely get a different set of children every time you replay the game! You can replay over and over and over again and you'll probably never see the exact same 4 children from a wife - ever!

Nonetheless, I'll consider what you've said and we'll go from there - thanks for the comments!

By the way, I'm considering the following skill leadership reduction changes:

1. Glory - reduction does not apply to Undead. Since the skill is in the Paladin Tree I've considered removing Undead from the Leadership Reduction Requirements bonus.
2. Necromancy - change it from -5, -10, and -15% to -2, -5, and -10%.
3. Ranged Specialist - change it from -5, -10, and -15% to -2, -5, and -10%.
4. Archmage - change it from -5, -10, and -15% to -2, -5, and -10%.

From skills:
1. Skeleton Archer: -10% + -15% +-15% = -40%!
2. Necromancer: -10% +-15% +-15% = -40%!

Changes would drop both of these to:
1. Skeleton Archer: -10% +-10% = -20%
2. Necromancer: -10% +-10% = -20%

Which would be half of what it is now and probably a lot better.

I've made the fixes to kid_dace in xeona_babies.txt and that will be in my next update - thanks again for pointing that out!

Okay, feel free to provide any additional comments - I also hope you've learned a bit more about modding!:grin:

/C\/C\

4) This is in the original game and I'm not even sure if the game actually uses it, but I left it alone when modding the skill.
Captain what does this DO ? I dont know men, but leave it alone :-P
5) I know about that stats, but my mistake i read it wrong, thought you give absolute value there. Thx for clearing it out anyway.
6) about rina`s kids, every give min 3% lds for all undead, so with 4 kids, and her 6%, +necromancy it = minimum 33%, without partial lds bonus form each kid, and without glory skill. That`s worst case scenario, in best you could 2*9+14+6(kids)+6(rina)+15(necromancy)+10glory= wait for it ... 69% lds reduction for whole undead race. With all stats bonus from kids/rina and imagine warrior with some 20k lds, with that army :-) (skeleton archer=4 lds or less).
Maybe i think still in CW/AP mod, because there is late game everything % better then absolute value : 1000lds is sick bonus early game, but later when hero have 20k+ lds 10% for undead(or any other) race is much better because it`s equal to 2000+ lds at that time much better then. I`ll try to see what happens, because i took rina and we are waiting for our first little undead toddler to come along :-)
Feanora : kid_young_sandro i didnt mean mistake, just he gives lds for undead, and she`s nature creature, bonus for neutrals and some human unit. It doesn`t feel right.
kid_voy i thought to move him to mirabella because all his sea stats bonus, mirabella=pirate, no other reason.
Mirabella : kid_aislinn have this string in mod{} sp_kid_aislinn=count,1 What does it do ?
7) about that i just thought to have 1 kid give bonus magic dmg/res and other poison dmg/res, not mix them up.
sp_power_inc=
sp_power_mod= nice idea, thx for info.

Ok so far that`s it, i`ll report if find anything else take care ppl :-)

Keep the discussion going!
 

Yah, but you're ignoring probability once again. Look up the chance of getting that in my previous post - you will most likely never see it!

I'm going to hammer you on this - probability, probability, probability! It is irrelevant to talk about the max since is highly improbable. If you can't get past this, then you're going to keep tripping over max. I hope you don't play the lottery and think that your 1$ investment means you're going to win 10's of millions of dollars, but that's the argument you're trying to make. It could happen, but it is so improbable that why not let someone enjoy their win?

Now the norm is something to talk about and that is why I'm considering the skill changes so that with Rina's kids you'll usually see somewhere between -18 to -24% LR to Undead. Glory no longer will apply and then Necromancers and Skeleton Archers will still get -20% due to the Ranged Specialist / Archmage and Necromancy. So those units could get a really good bonus of -44% which is pretty good and then you could get Galthran or Moandor for even better LR: -70% for Skeleton Archers and -55% for Necromancers both incredibly awesome and maybe too high.

Now if we focus on either case, which is 1 out of 19 plays then we can consider making a change on this basis.

I have actually thought about Rina's (and all the wives for that matter) children -LR bonuses a lot and have often considered reducing it more. You're tipping me more towards a change to her, but I'll think about it some more.

One other thing I want to point out is that -Leadership Requirements can be offset by other bonuses so don't be so enamored with it.

I encourage you to keep trying to find stuff like this as there are many permutations and I've tried to think of most of them and the important point is to determine their probability and then play it and see how it really pans out!

Yah, but you're only most likely talking about a Warrior, but remember he will probably only be able to get one spell school to Level 3 (especially if you're going to shoot for Necromancy Level 3). So he's going to need extra units and you may not be able to resurrect as many because of your lower intellect. So he probably needs the -LR stuff the most.

Don't forget that you can't change Rina into a Zombie while your waiting for your first child (or any children for that matter). Same goes with Feanora and Frog Feanora, the battle counter for children only increases while you're in their normal form. After you have all the babies that you want to have for those wives then you can transform them (or in Feanora's case you have to not talk to her for 10 battles to get her to transform).

Can't wait to hear how it goes for you and Rina! By the way, are you playing Warrior on Impossible? Or let me know which hero class and difficulty level you're playing.

Yah, unfortunately to stay true to Young Sandro I can't change his skills so his Necromancy Skill is still there. I don't think it's too much of a stretch for Feanora to have a baby that dabbles in the Undead - she does come from a swamp you know and you know how those swamp kids like to hang out with zombies!;)

Mom? Guess who's coming to dinner? My friend, Noric!

Yah, I figured that - it is natural, but as it turns out Mirabella has a daughter, Sylvia, with the same HOMM3 Advanced Navigaion bonus as Voy. There other skill is different, though.

I think you mean Rina's Aislinn? I mentioned this in my *.TXT file change list, but there is a bug where I can't determine if a child was on the hero apparently so I needed that bonus so that I can display her Evil Book bonus properly in your spell book. I'd like to actually query whether the child is "equipped", but when I played with it, I couldn't get it to work so I resorted to using a bonus.

There are plenty of children that give the same damage / resistance bonus - the other PlanesWalker babies! Kalt and Lacus are the only two that are the way you saw them because of the reason I specified.

Well, thanks again for your comments!

Also, do me a favor and check to see whether you can Resurrect the Undead with the Resurrection Spell + Necromancy Skill Level 1. I have not gotten around to testing this out and so it may not work! Don't forget that it will still have the same level requirement restrictions: Level 1 - Units Level 1-2, Level 2, Units Level 1-3, and Level 3 - Units Level 1-4.

I'm also going to make the skill changes like I mentioned in the previous post and I'll think more about the Wife + Baby -Leadership Requirement bonuses some more as this is an area that I've given a lot of thought to and I find that I return to it to question whether or not the bonus values are right from time to time.

Keep questioning what I'm doing, too, as that's the only way to help me think outside the box I've made!:-)

/C\/C\

Minor Tweaks for now...
 

Okay, I thought about this a little more and have made some minor tweaks for now.

I looked at what I did for the Necromancy Skill (HOMM3 Necromancy Skill) and before it decreased Leadership Requirement of Undead and added to the Power of Necro Call. Now it will only decrease LR of Undead - the Necro Call bonus will be removed.

Two of Rina's HOMM3 babies have Animated Dead. This acted just like the HOMM3 Necromancy skill where it decreased LR of Undead and added to the power of Necro Call. Now it will only add to the power of Necro Call, so two of the Heroes that were -6% LR to Undead now drop to -3% LR to Undead.

Next I looked at Isra who had Expert Necromancy. A bonus to Undead Spiders was not in the game so she also had a bonus to Undead Spiders; however, this effectively gave her 4 skill points instead of 3, so what I've done is dropped her Expert Necromancy to Advanced + Undead Spiders. So now she goes from -9 to -6% LR Undead.

Next Vidomina had Expert Necromancy and Bone Dragons, once again 4 skill points instead of 3. So I moved the Bone Dragons to Lord Haart (since his HOMM3 bonus is Black Knights, and Tamika has Black Knights already and no one had Bone Dragons) so that Vidomina now has just Expert Necromancy with -9% LR to Undead and then Lord Haart has Advanced Necromancy and Bone Dragons.

So now there is Vidomina with -9%, Isra and Lord Haart with -6%, and everyone else with -3% LR to Undead. So now the total is -24% +Rina's -6% so 30% max, but the chance of getting it is 1/19 * 2/18 * 1/17 * 15/16 = 0.0322% or 1 in 3101. So you'll more than likely just get -18% to -21% (including Rina's bonus).

I know this doesn't seem like much of a change, but think about the fact that Rina's children's other bonuses are very limited due to the Necromancy bonuses. So I'm thinking a minor tweak like this might go a long ways.

The proof is in the pudding - I need you to playtest it and see how you're doing late in the game. I'm a little worried that Rina might not have enough bonuses for you to last and you might have to swtich to another wife. I know that Skeleton Archers are mowed down with reckless abandon and so I actually think you might need a lot to do well. Also, Undead do not get any morale bonuses and so I think you may need an advantage like this. Rina's kids are kind of quantity over quality, but I'm hoping you're able to be successful with her late in the game.

I've also made the skill changes I've mentioned previously...

Should be able to send out the update to you soon...

/C\/C\

You were right about probability, but i`m right about %, got 4 kids with -3lds%(stupid aislinn with evil book bonus, should have smothered him on birth but undead baby i dont think it would matter to him :-) with rina, and necromancy it gets -33%, with glory 10% more.
I play mage impossible (only way i roll :-), got aislinn, sandro, xsi, charna. But problem is i`m on sunset islands with nice undead setup, with no undead units available :-P
My how much did AP/CW spoil me with dragons available in rusty anchor :-D , now i`m suffering with stupid archmage/griffin shield/tank combo with some support. I really miss royal griffins, paladins, demonolog ...
All in all, i think rina will be weak later in game, so i guess i`ll kick her and pick some else as you suggested. But as it is rina is first which you can take for wife, so i`ll take them as they come for testing.
And Q : why does wives give bonus att/def and moral ? With +1 moral every unit they already give att/def get more stats. With +1 initiative/speed it`s a bit much.

1) Mirabella you miss griffin for +1 moral (they get initiative, and speed but not moral).
2) Did you change something in Holy indulgence quest ? From western islands, you must go back to swamp to get holy pardon from priest. I get it for 4420 exp, and some item. All other quests if that rank are 400-500 exp reward, so i ask about this high reward is it mistake, or was it like that in original?

OMG i just found ghosts, and it`s ridiculous. Charna unlimited retaliations, for ghosts 40lds/7initiative/6speed/60hp/7-11dmg :-DDDDDD NO loss already 100% sure.
I`m going around with 2x50 ghosts, and 3x15 inquisitors to control their numbers and rage generating.

Matt, I haven't read all the posts here, but my experience in an Impossible difficulty game with a Warrior was that a -10% leadership requirements bonus I modded in was far too much since the Undeads are already overpowered IMO, and the game was a breeze. I'm not sure how much harder your mod is than the original, but that's just an FYI, as I recently completed an all Undead game.

Keep playing Rina!
 

I thought Aislinn was a girl!;) Hey, by the way, don't diss your Evil Book - it'll come in handy once your mage gets more powerful!

Also, don't count Glory any more for Undead - hopefully you're playing with the newest update I sent you...

By the way, didn't you get some of the Undead units from the shipwrecks and then Castle Karmage (or whatever it's called with Enimem or whatever his name is)? You should have been able to at least get some Skeletons, Zombies, and Vampires early as a guess...

I really wanted to encourage people to pick a wife - plus you'll find out later that you'll need that stuff. Believe me, once you get to about Level 15 or so, you'll find that the game starts getting harder and harder and harder - especially when attacking enemy heroes!

Okay, let me look into that, I think Griffins should get +1 morale with Mirabella. By the way, the latest update included a fix to Rina where I missed her Black Knight -LR.

You know, I did not change this to my knowledge - I think that's how much you get for that quest.

I was a little puzzled by it a couple of playthrough's back, but I'm pretty sure that's what you get.

I'll double check to see if the values in the *.QST indicate a lot of experience for that one.

This is great stuff! I need you to keep playing Rina - I want to know if those ghosts are too powerful! I was a bit learly with the change, but thought I'd try it out, but you've got to manage them as you can see and you better be careful, because I think they'll act too much like a double-edged sword once you're leadership gets too high and you have too many that get out of control. I think you're going to have trouble with them later...

Another thing about the Ghosts, is that they used to have -50% Fire Resistance, but I set it back to 0% because I thought I was being too harsh with them. Let me know if you feel that I should reinstate their Fire Resistance Penalty.

Let me know when you suffer your first loss, and don't count losses before you got your Undead army setup. I'll about guarantee, though, that you won't get no loss with that setup. In fact I challenge you to try to get no loss and let me know how far you go before your first loss.

Have fun and keep playing! By the way, your comments have been invaluable so keep them coming!:grin:

By the way, I'm not sure if you use Enchanted Hero, but I've just uncovered the bug in the README where I mention the possibility of a unit's damage going really high and hope to fix it shortly. Also, I neglected to prevent it from being cast on the Undead, so be careful using it because the spell might accidentally cast Bless (negative to Undead) or Heal (damage to your Undead) on your unit with that spell. I'll add the necessarily change to make it so you can't cast it on the Undead.

/C\/C\

Hey, thanks!
 

Okay, good comments - we'll see how well Fatt_Shade does with his ghosts and whether he has a control problem later.

I think, though, you'll find that Rina will be pretty good for a while and then you'll start to run into stacks with higher Initiative and then you'll start to suffer losses. Also the ghosts are going to be a problem to keep under control so you'll have to do a good job managing them.

We'll see how Fatt_Shade's playthrough goes, because he has no idea what's in store for him!:evil:

/C\/C\

Does Resurrection + Necromancy Level 1 Work with the Undead
 

Hey, Fatt_Shade, I forgot to ask if you've checked whether Resurrection + Necromancy Level 1 works with the Undead - does it?

By the way, also keep in mind as you play whether there should be a penalty associated with it. For example, I thought of imposing a 33 to 50% penalty for its use on the Undead, but held off.

I think it might make sense, though, to apply a penalty to it since it is an Order Spell.

Or maybe I should make Necro Call Resurrect Undead instead of Resurrection with Necromancy Level 1. What do you think?

Can't wait to hear more about you're playthrough with Rina's unstoppable Ghost army!:-)

/C\/C\

I didnt take glory beyond 1st lvl, i just say it would work in that way.
As for undead units at start, i only found ghosts in sunset islands, on boat that you rise from sea with spell, all other undead units i found so far were regular zombies and some skeletons(both useless), only 150 archers, and i can lead 300 now. So i bought 60 ghosts, and after 10 battles i have 400 in reserve :-P

Mirabella already gave bonuses for griffins so i just thought you missed moral.
Good find with rina black knight.

Holy indulgence quest is a bit much, 10 times more then other quests you get at that islands, so i thought it was mistake.

Ghosts are a bit tricky, i use half my spells to keep them in check(heal mostly), but it`s even harder against huge stacks of low lvl units like 600 devilfish(or something in that area) vs 50 ghosts, i end up with 200 ghosts and spend 4 spell cast to get them back in control :-) They already have -100 magic resistance, so i think no need for -fire also(maybe 10-20%).

Enchanted hero, yea i did have a bit strange situation with them :-) Against lucky james, he cast enchanted hero on his swordman, and when i attack it with my ghosts they made 7500 dmg killing whole stack 120 ghosts. Swordman are physical dmg, so it`s impossible for them to make such dmg to ghosts.

Resurrection + necromancy havent try so far, cant find res spell :-(
And i think there should be on penalty to undead because ghosts and vampires in bat form dont need it almost, but other undead will need resurrection normal, if you dont use evlin. Or necro call would be much better option, it`s undead spell, make it res undead units, good idea.

About ghost soul drain, any idea how to make it to rise number of killed units, not done dmg ? Exp : i kill 1 black dragon and get 30 ghosts form it, or when i fought spider boss in mines, i attack it 1 time(case fire breath on ghost) and got 80 ghosts from that attack, and didnt even kill spider. So how to change this tricky ghost ability ? It just doesnt make sense to rise 10 ghost, from 1 killed unit. Like necro call spell, you can rise undead units form corpse, but cant rise more creatures then are killed (like from killing 1 black dragon, i cant rise 2 bone. only 1).

And did you change something in lina charges ? As whitemage said here http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthr...287#post364287, it`s something wrong. I dont remember how it was in original game settings, but it just broken :-) To much mana/rage per charge when lvlup max.

Hahahaha what a joke :-)
I remembered 1 EGD build in AP/CW and tried it with my ghosts : 1 stack of cursed ghosts, and 1 stack of an other unit:
step 1 - battle start kick ghosts in enemy line,
step 2 -on other unit cast invisibility
step 3 - repeat step 2, until every other unit is dead
step 4 - cast heal on ghosts until they return under control :-)
This was possible because i found rage eater (5 mana/5rage every turn). I killed kraken on 11 lvl, with 50 cursed ghosts battle finished with something over 1200 :-D

Good stuff! I'll look into some of your ideas...
 

Okay - good!

Okay, you got a bit unlucky - I think you can see now why I gave Rina's babies the bonuses since they are hard to come by sometimes.

It's a little hard for a Mage to get Ranged Specialist leveled up early to get those extra Skeleton Archers. Later in the game, Level 1 units are harder and harder to keep alive.

Do you think I should change this? I guess I know now to do it. I figured that the developers discovered that your hero was short in the experience area at this point in the game and they offset one quest to make up it.

I guess I could drop it to 1/10 of its current value and then it would be okay. I'll see if I can find the right quest file...

Okay, I'll leave them alone. Yah, I thought they'd be tricky to control - they're neat, but you have to be careful with them.

Yah - that's not right!

I'm glad I finally found this bug! What I was trying to do there is Heal your unit sometimes with Enchanted Hero. But the way it worked in the spell cast is that it would set the damage of the attacked unit to the healing value! So I was able to track it down when I was fighting Tibold and I cast it on my Dwarves early in the battle. The problem before is that I'd be many rounds into a battle and couldn't remember all my steps so I couldn't repeat.

And I was mislead into thinking it was an issue with the Phoenix, or Ice Ball, or something like that and kept going down the wrong track!

In this game, the enemy had Cerberi and when I attacked his units, it was supposed to heal my Dwarves, but instead it would set the Damage of the Cerberi to the heal value.

Unfortunately, though, I couldn't get it to work without writing my own special cure and so decided to just use Resurrect instead (which already was working). I think it is better that way anyway, because the spell is meant to cast beneficial spells on your units and Resurrection is better than healing. Also, it is simply a chance to cast Resurrection, so it is totally unpredictable and you may just have Bless or Stone Skin, etc. cast on your units instead. All the other spells work with the existing spell casting LUA functions so I think that spell should be good now!

Oh yah, I've been playing Paladin for my second straight game and you take Resurrection for granted with him.

But you haven't found Necro Call, either, have you? I think I'll look into upgrading Necro Call's ability with Necromancy instead of using Resurrection. Plus, there are numerous posts on wanting Necro Call to act this way.

The problem is both Resurrection and Necro Call take a while to find. Oh well...

Do you want me to change it? I guess its about souls, not damage. Let me look into changing it the next time I run across a stack of ghosts (which won't be long).

I actually think this is a pretty good idea then you won't be able to do much to higher level units and you'll focus on using your Ghosts on lower level units. All souls are equal!:)

Don't worry - it'll be okay and that post does not apply due to one of the best new features of my mod: MANA_RAGE_GAIN_K!

This effects all Mana and Rage gain abilities: Lina's Chargers, Reaper's Rage Draining, Inquisitor Holy Rage, Spell Mana Spring, Skill Concentration (+items), and EGD Mana Source. I think those are all the sources of Mana and Rage increase in the game.

The way it works is that all abilites' increase values are at 100% rounds 1-5, 50% rounds 6-10, 25% rounds 11-15, and 0% round > 15.

When fighting enemy heroes, bosses, and towers, you get +5 rounds to the above. All the above values are for impossible, by the way, and with Hard, Normal, and Easy you get more rounds the easier the difficulty.

Most of your battles have probably been short so far and so you probably haven't experienced its affects too much. But you'll find that you'll start going farther and farther into the latter rounds and then it will become more and more of an issue. You won't be able to generate as much mana and rage and then you'll get to the point where you can't generate any and then you'll see how fun it is then!

Once you experience it, you won't want to go back to AP/CW without it!:grin:

Okay, that's it! Great ideas as always!:-)

/C\/C\

My build so far for undead wife/kids :
16 lvl , 11att/13def/20int , 50rage , 140 mana, and only 5k lds :-)
100/130 ghosts , 70/85 cursed ghosts , 2x30 ingusitors , 35 archmages. Ghosts for killing, inquisitors for rage and controlling ghosts archmages for support (ghost with magic shield against any melee unit takes literally 0 dmg), when i find necromancers they will fly out of army lineup.
So far i bought only 50 both ghost type, and now i have in reserve 1200 ghost, and 500 cursed, so i think unlimited retaliation from charna is a bit overpowered.Better her give them bonus ress or dmg or something.
Cleared all up to lower Hadar mines with no loss and no resurrection spell.
I found much easier to cast illusion on ghosts instead using them in combat, my main units are just to control enemy.

1)When i scouted gerdas kids thinking to switch to see how it is found this :
kid_ajit why unlimited retaliations for beholders ? they arent melee units. Better ress/dmg bonus
kid_lorelei same as for ajit, alchem/cannoner are even slower then beholders they will never fight in melee, so why unlimited retaliations. Give them speed
kid_synca giants get 2 morale, but no initiative or speed, so no mater how high they stats when they get to enemy in 4-5turn :-)
kid_orwald 2x+(1) initiative to all units, is this mistake or planed ?
2)Same as for gerda, when i killed kraken i thought about divorce rina for mirabella :
kid_ingham priest inquisitor again unlimited retaliations, no need, better some other bonus
kid_edric gives griffins unlimited retaliations . . . now i just think you copy/paste this to all kids :-) So does this mean they retaliate 2 times for every attack :-P
kid_christian and now for melee units sprite/dragonfly no hitback,1,0,0, :-(
kid_mullich +2 moral/speed to all units i think it`s to much better +1 moral/init/speed or not even all that.
3) in necromancy skill should limit +3magic dmg to magic units, not all undead. I have 500 skeleton archers 1 lvl unit, with 5-6 dmg. Sick :-)
So i thought changing bonus magic dmg to priests,mages etc.

And i cant find anywhere exp table for hero. Is it still max lvl 30? Because i`m already 17, and not yet 40% of game cleared.

I just now read all wife kids, and have some thoughts. You changed tower script in supresing item battles. Why doesnt any kid have lowering tower ress/hp penalty. Or any other penalties ? You have all kind of bonuses for ally units, but almost no lowering for enemy(except 1-2 feanora kids for -magic/poison ress).
In your mod enemy troops are much stronger then in original settings, even more with enemy heroes, so why not change some kids to lower enemy initiative/speed or any other stats, for those who cant afford onslaught skill.
And where are rage spirits exp tables ? Are they also limited to 30 as original game ?
Any way to give some kid rage inflow (15% maybe), like warrior rage skill ? I found mana/rage %, and mana inflow in battle_mana,1 (i guess 1 mana per turn in battle), so why not some angry little kid that drives you in rampage during battle for sleepless nights, diaper changing, night feeding :-)

All in all there are some great combination for kid_ bonuses ,but when i look at them all together, they seem a bit much. Better that give bonuses limited to lvl of unit then global %.
Expl : kid_craig_hack from orcelyn 27% dmg to all units +3physical dmg to all units. No item in game give that much bonus. 27% dmg ~= 20 att , and to top it +3 absolute physical dmg. I like better wives bonuses lvl 1 unit +1att/def . . . , lvl 2 +2att/def . . . And some kids (allot in xeona orcelyn give high dmg bonus to all units) and on other hand some kids gove low resistance bonus (like gerdas kid_thorgrim 12 all ress ~= 9 def , not much comparing to craig_hack 20att , +3 phy dmg).

Why do you list all units in those strings ? For bonus dmg, why not :
{
filter {
belligerent=ally
}
pbonus=
dbonus=magic,0,27,0,-100,0,0 and copy for poison,fire,physical
rbonus=
attack_on=
attack_off=
}
Doest it make problems in game if not listed all units separately ?

Sounds like a great game so far...
 

Sounds like you got a pretty good combination - sometimes Phantom's hard to get. Which battle has been the toughest so far would you say?

The children bonuses work this way:

Level 1 & 2: +Attack, Krit, Defense, Health, Hitback, Initiative, Morale, Speed
Level 3: Health, Hitback, Initiative, Morale, Speed
Level 4: Health, Hitback, Initiative (Ranged), Morale, Speed (Melee)
Level 5: Health, Hitback, Morale
*Level 6: Health, Hitback
*Level 7: Health

Hitback - means unlimited retaliation

Morale doesn't apply to undead so they get extra Attack, Krit, and Defense for their level. I tried to carry unlimited retaliation as far as I could, sooner or later you'll run up against enemies that will get to your Ranged units and so it is nice to have then. I thought for Griffins and Demons that I used an alternate for them since they already have unlimited retaliation. For levels 6 and 7, these only apply to a few children where they had a duplicate bonus for a set of units. Rather than have the same unit bonus twice, theirs would apply to a group of units, but the level would be +1 or +2 depending on how large the group was. So Mutare, for example is dragons, but I add +1 to their level so they only get Health and Hitback instead of those and Morale. The system works pretty well, I think.

Also, if a bonus was for a group of units then I removed hitback since I only wanted it to apply to 1 or 2 units with a bonus, so those are the rules that I used.

I think you overlooked Gerda's dwarf bonuses - same as other wives but to dwarves.
So for Ajit, unlimiited retaliation is per rule for Level 3 and Level 4.
Same for Lorelei.
For Synca, she's got Level 5 so that rule applies (the other +1 Morale she gets due to HOMM3 Leadership skill). They already get +1 speed and +1 initiative from Gerda and before I implemented the level system (all individual unit bonuses were like level 1) Giants would just march into the mix and you'd just have to heal them and they'd wipe the floor with everyone and imagine using Phantom on top of that! So that's when the system above was born!
For Ordwald, his skills in HOMM3 are actually unknown since he only appears as an enemy hero. So his HOMM3 Skills are Logistics (+1 Speed to all), Pathfinding (+1 Initiative to all) and then he gets an all Dwarf unit bonus, but add +1 to their level since they are a group (for example Miners are considered level 2 for bonuses, Dwarves level 3, etc.). I just noticed that I had sp_lead_unitcannoner instead of sp_lead_unit_cannoner - I'll fix that! It's hard to get these bonuses spelled right! Darn it!
For Ingham, per rule of level 2 Priests and level 3 Inquisitors.
For Edric, Griffins already have unlimited retaliation so they should get I think krit instead - I'll double check them.
Christian - bonus is to a group (girls) so no unlimited retaliation per rule - sorry Christian!
Mullich's HOMM3 Skills: Advanced Logistics (+2 Speed) and Advanced Leadership (+2 Morale).

So once again all bonuses are per rule and staying true to the original HOMM3 hero skills.

I'll double check Edric to make sure the Griffin bonus is right!

I actually was seriously considering removing both the Magic Damage and Magic Resistance bonuses because I thought they might be too powerful, but left them in there since I actually forgot about them!

I was thinking the bonus should just be: Defense, then Health, then Critical Hit.

I'm probably going to remove both of those now that you've reminded me of them.

You know, as I consider the Necromancy Skill changes, I made them to encourage people to play the Undead more, but maybe Rina is encouragement enough? All the Undead bonuses are fairly recent (as new as my last playthrough) including: -LR, and statistic improvements. I kind of wanted to make it like Archmage or Ranged Specialist, but to Undead. Before it just did 4 things:

1) Allows use of Resurrection to raise Undead
2) After combat, raise part of a fallen troop (the unmodded skill)
3) Amplify spells that deal pain and suffering
4) Improve the Evil Book

I recently added:

5) Decrease LR of Undead and Improve their abilities

But now I'm thinking that maybe I didn't need 5 or needed to be very limited with it. I do like giving them -LR because you'll be encouraged to play them, but maybe that's all 5 should do? Or maybe just add to Defense, then Health, and then Critical Hit.

Hmmm... things to think about...

I think it's in HERO.TXT, you should be about 2 levels ahead of where you would normally be about where you're at - you'll actually reach level 30 about 5,000 exp more than before so it'll slow down a bit. The original experience table actually had inconsistencies in it and so I simply made it consistent, but you level up a little bit faster early and then you cross about level 29 where (like I mentioned above) you'll need about 5,000 more experience than before to get to level 30. This is per a formula I used to make the gain table consistent.

You know, I never really thought of affecting towers like that. I guess you could put a bonus in there although since they are "pawns" special rules apply to them.

A lot of the HOMM3 skills translated nicely over to KB, but there were a few that I had to create a new bonus for, i.e. Tactics and a few others. As it turns out, there are no HOMM3 skills that reduce any enemy statistics. During the translation process for those HOMM3 skills that had no equivalent, I tried to be as true as possible to the original HOMM3 skill. I did, however, consider enemy skill reduction bonuses, but as it turned out, the bonuses ended up winning out over the reductions.

In HOMM3 the hero Tactics skill worked the same as the KB Tactics skill so what to do with babies with that HOMM3 skill? Since I didn't have any skills that directly affected the Hero's attack / defense I decided to appy it there; however, the enemy hero skills use the KB hero class skill trees and I decided to actually have enemy heroes with the KB Tactics skill (mostly Warriors) decrease your Initiative and then Speed by 1.

During the development phase, though, I had already decided on the baby HOMM3 Tactics bonuses and then the enemy heroes were done much later. I did consider maybe changing the HOMM3 Tactics to be like the enemy heroes one, but I ended up leaving it as is as I never really went back and considered it heavily again.

So that's why there aren't very many reduction skills for the babies (actually I think it's only the wives with a few reduction skills).

By the way, I'm not sure if enemy reduction morale skills work at all because it doesn't show you their morale! I think enemy morale is always neutral!

I actually considered dropping your morale as the combat goes long, but I actually don't know how to do it. I think in HOMM3 that happened if the battle went really long.

The developers were sure good at hiding things! It took me a while to find the spirit experience tables: ARENA.TXT. Who would have thought they were in there?!

Spirits now go up to level 46, although for a mage I'm not sure how high you can get them, but probably only about to level 33 - 35 as a guess. I think my Paladin last game finished with them at about level 35 - 37, and I'm guessing that a Warrior might be able to get them to level 37 - 39? I'm not sure, though because the original tables were a little bit inconsistent and so I (like the hero experience table) made the level up consistent. I think at Spirit Level 29 or 30 the tables cross and then it'll take a bit more than my last playthrough so you might not quite make it to the levels I mentioned above.

The spirit experience gain is very tricky and inconsistent as a whole. I'm not sure how much attention you've paid it, but essentially skills that damage multiple units amplify the Spirit's experience.

These skills are: Underground Blades, Evil Shoal, and Black Hole. Rockfall and Rage Draining might amplify based on the number of units they hit, but I'm a bit uncertain about those although I think they do. I'm pretty sure that if a Spirit ability does not cause immediate damage, then you just get the normal experience for it. These are: Poison Rain, Ice Ball, and Gizmo. Those abilities give much lower experience. All other abilities since they don't do any damage at all give normal experience.

I actually played with this area quite a bit trying to figure out how it worked because I found that once I got Underground Blades and Black Hole that Zerock and Reaper would start leveling much quicker while Sleem and Lina were much harder to level up because Evil Shoal is hard to use unless you have the Rage and no units near enemies and none of Lina's abilities amplify experience.

So anyway, that's the story there!

Well thanks again for the comments.

I encourage you to continue playing!

Let me know how the battle to free Tibold goes and which enemy heroes start to give you trouble! I think that you've started to notice that the battles are now starting to get more and more difficult. It'll be interesting to hear how well your Ghosts do in Ellinia fighting the Elves. That will be an interesting story to hear!

I'm currently with Orcelyn and we had our first baby - Merist! I'm playing the Paladin during this playthrough (my second Paladin game), I have to marry all the wives and have all the children so that I can make sure they work! So I don't have the luxury of being able to stick with one wife until I get Xeona since there are no wives after her.

I've already suffered a few losses, although almost all of the non-hero battles have been no loss. Since I have to max out the number of wives and children, some battles I can't wait until I'm a bit stronger to attack (the 2 Undead stacks in the Earl's Dungeon with the Frogs is hard with just Bears and Barbarians since I have to fight with human Rina (since I need those battles to count towards her having a baby)). Tibold's army also gave my Gerda Dwarves trouble because of the Cyclops and Archdemons. You have to complete that quest before you can get Orcelyn. The Orc Embassy was also tough with Dwarves - Ancient Ents and Royal Thorns were a lot of fun! That battle got my last Gerda baby just in time to switch to Orcelyn!

By the way, I implemented the change to Ghosts, where their numbers increase based on the number of units they actually kill! It seems to work okay - it was a little tricky to figure out how to compute the same number killed as what the damage actually did. As I was playtesting last night I'd sometimes get Ghosts killed 33 units: Their ranks are filled with 32 - doh! But now it works - hurray!

I'm going to think more about the Necromancy Skill Undead bonuses, but I'm going to leaving it alone for now and let you play as is. It'll be interesting to see how well your Ghosts do against Elves since they do Magic Damage and have good Magic Resistance. I'll try to provide another update soon with the changes to Ghost's Soul Drain and any more errors we find.

/C\/C/

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.

Rock, Paper, Scissors!
 

Yah, they were worthless before, and now they still have weakness to fire so you can burn them with reckless abandon, but now they are much better!:-)

This is what makes it tough! I'll look into the invisibile inquisitor thing, I'm not sure what the rules are supposed to be with it, but I think they should not be able to be the primary target, but I think it is okay if they get zapped as an ancillary target (lightning jumps are not sight based).

By the way, I think I have noticed the AI having a slightly different set of rules with targeting units with spells, kind of like how their Black Dragon's can take a burn path that's more optimal than we can manually.

The thing about the later part of the game is it becomes a little bit more rock, scissors, paper and you can be using units that have a weakness in a certain resistance and then it will get exposed.

This is how we all play as well - we exploit the weaknesses of our opponents (how many Ghosts did you generate)?

Actually though, Neoka has +20% Magic Resistance, and then the Mirror Armor (or whatever its called) is another +15 I think. Also, I think Neoka has a baby or two with Resistance which is another +5 Resist All.

So this is what I was referring to before.

You know, the strategy for all the King's Bounty games has been find a group of units you like and then you pretty much stick with them for most of the game. Now you have to strategize and the wives and children can help you get past tough battles and Sonya (if memory serves) is only a Level 23 hero. Imagine when you face a triple caster! Yikes! I want my mommy!;)

Also, I hope you have a plan to get (or already have) Higher Magic - that will turn you into a real mage! You'll get some double casting, too!

Remember I said no loss on Impossible is going to be really hard now and it might not even be doable - I haven't been able to do it!:-)

I will admit, though, that it hasn't been my primary focus since I have to play test and debug all the new aspects that I've added.

Diana and Neoka might be good go betweens before Xe and they'll help you with your magic deficiencies if your Undead are having too much trouble. That's where Rina's a bit weak later in the game - she doesn't help out a mage too much.

You know, unfortunately, since the babies' skills are based on their HOMM3 skills and in that game certain heroes with certain skillsets dominated a town and since some of the children choices seem a really good match for certain wives it worked out that way.

Nonetheless, I've recently considered "baby swaps" where for example, I could maybe swap a baby between two wives if it wouldn't be totally inconceivable (i.e. two human babies could probably be swapped). For example, Mirabella's Christian could probably be swapped to Neoka, but I'd have to figure out a good Neoka baby to give to Mirabella in exchange. Xeona has the most babies because of the Minotaurs, and all the human babies are perfect fits for her so I can't really move hers.

Sooner or later you'll probably come across Clancy who has bonuses to Unicorns, but is a Gerda baby. You'll say what? But as it turns out, Clancy in HOMM3 is a Dwarf with bonuses to Unicorns. So unfortunately Clancy is Gerda's baby and has a Unicorn Bonus. Sorry, just the way it is as I can't have you and Neoka have a Dwarf baby! Well, unless we use the stork story again, but I think we've already used that twice and someone's going to figure out that something funny is going on with this stork!;)

Once again, I'm also limited by trying to stay true to their original HOMM3 bonuses, but I'll look into evening things out more if it makes sense.

I'm not sure if you looked at my skill list, but Tactics is not the only skill that didn't translate over well from HOMM3 to KB. There's also Scouting - that might be a good one since you scout an enemies weakness, although I'd probably have that one drop enemy defense, for example. There are also a few others - I just haven't had a chance to review yet, but will soon!

Also don't forget that the Mage gets a 50% spirit experience penalty compared to a Warrior (that's standard game).

No - I haven't had a chance to look into that yet, but I will! :-)

You know, I actually wanted the enemy heroes' Destroyer skill to work just like yours. Unfortunately, the mods {...} section is where the Destroyer skill bonuses are implemented and you cannot use such a section with enemy heroes! :(

So I was taken aback for a while about what to do with it and then I thought of the -resistance bonus. So I think with Destroyer it's either one way or the other, but not both. The problem arises is that only one resistance is effected, so with your hero I would have had to have you pick a resistance that you wanted to use as your -resistance. I'd need to add a dialog or something like that which I really don't know how to do.

So I think the way Destroyer works is fine for both your and the enemy heroes - use more Divine Armor or troops with better resistance to help you with those enemies.

Also, you'll find that you're Geyser will keep increasing in power and when you think about it 900-1800 * 8 (a total of 7200 to 14400 ignoring defense and resistance) is pretty good damage! And you should be able to get over 30 Intellect if you focus your level up points into it - remember I said you might want to choose other stats over Leadership?

I think you can see how there is much more strategy now, you can't just stick with the same group of units and expect to waltz through the game.

I hope you're having fun!:-)

Okay - that's a good point, I guess that's why I used Resurrect, but I'll see if there's a way to make Necro Call act like Resurrect when you get Necromancy Level 1. If I can't figure it out, then I'll just stick with Resurrect with a 50% penalty for Undead.

You know, I left them off because I considered them not to be Warriors, which is what Iron Fist skill is supposed to help. Skeleton Warriors and Zombies are the Undead's Warriors, but I thought that the Vampires were something different (Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise - come on!:grin:) - same as Ghosts. Vampires don't even use a sword or axe, they just have that slender wand thing (or whatever it is) so that's why I left them off.

Well good comments as always, I probably won't be able to do much tonight (Monday Night Football), but hopefully Tuesday or Wednesday I'll get back to checking stuff.

In the mean time keep playing and try to devise some new strategies to deal with some of these tough hereos! That's the fun part of the game with my mod!:-)

/C\/C\

"Vampires don't even use a sword or axe, they just have that slender wand thing (or whatever it is) so that's why I left them off."

It's called a rapier. :)

Hah! Thanks! I guess I don't have the best eyeballs. So that makes them more like the captain of a pirate ship, right!;)

1) invisibility spell i also saw enemy hero cast it and still see his unit, so i quess it`s some bug with spell in general.
I got 1800 ghosts, and 800 cursed before i stopped using them in battle :-)
No charna`s unlimited retaliation isn`t cheat at all :-D
And my higher magic is all good until i meet enemy units with 40% res all, with heroes even worse because enemy units 25% higher all stats. That`s why i said to give some kid`s with lowering enemy res(1 kid/wife would be nice to hope for).
2) Yea i also now think between neoka/diana for their kid`s with int%, and attack_spell%. But i already used so much runes in dark commander (3rd lvl :-) and just after clearing dwarf lands got to demonis and bought full undead army.
3) I get that you wanted to get homm3 heroes in this game, and i said it before it`s great idea, and great mod. But i asked all wives to be in some way balanced in chance to get kids with similar bonuses (for races not same bonus for each kid).
4) i did -enemy res% in CW in fire mage medal, so i say it`s no problem, just wanted to see how will ppl answer to see how to edit destroyer skill.
I also took almost every lvl int/mana choices insted lds, so i have nice int so far but still not making some heavy dmg with spells :-(
5) as for vampires, they are melee units using sword to attack, so i thought they should be in iron fist. you placed there all other humanoid creature in game 1-4lvl`s so why not vampires :-) Horseman attack with lance from horseback, they also dont use sword/axe what about them? And also missed peasants for that skill, because we all know how much peasants can be useful in latgame :-D

Thanks for all the playing!
 

You know that's the way it works - I think it was probably Enchanted Hero that cast it on that particular unit (that is fairly common).

There is actually AI code for using the Invisibility spell, but I don't think I've ever seen the computer use it. It might just be that they don't have the spell in their spell list. I'll have to see if I gave any enemy heroes Invisibility now that I think about it...

You can't attack the computer's invisible units, though. I wonder if I could figure out how to make them completely invisible when its the computer's units so you can't see them.

Hmmm... more things to add to my list to check!:-)

I'm really glad you did that - that's the only way to see if a new idea is a good idea!

I'll see what I can do with the HOMM3 Skills with no obvious translation - maybe Eagle Eye is a good candidate for -res. Hmmm...

Okay - who you got now? Do you still use your Ghosts? Also, I haven't gotten to fighting Bone Dragons yet, but when I do I think I'm going to add the spells I listed a few pages back to them on their attack...

I'll see what I can do about a little "cross-pollination" and see if I can do some baby switching to help disperse the abilities a little bit better...

Don't worry - hopefully you'll get a Xe baby (or two) with some increase in spell power.

By the way, which level are you now and where's your mana and intellect at? Just curious...

Yah, you know I didn't consider Peasants warriors either - they're ... ... Peasants!!!

Horseman are knights on horses. I'll think about the Peasants and Vamps some more even though they don't seem like real warriors to me...

By the way, where are you know in the game? Have you made it to the Lands of Death yet and fought Karrador?

Sounds like you're having fun and I'll have a good list of comments from your playthrough to make it better!:-)

/C\/C\

We forgot about a few babies...
 

I forgot about the babies with Air, Earth, Fire, and Water Resistance - these translated over such that:

Air - Magic Resistance
Earth - Physical Resistance
Fire - Fire Resistance - duh!
Water - Poison Resistance

So here's the wife / baby list of those babies with those skills:

Feanora: Adrienne with Expert Fire Magic (she gets a big fire resist bonus because of her Expert Fire Magic, by the way, she's a human Witch). Fire Resistance: +42%.
Gerda: Grindan and Labetha both with Basic Earth Magic (Grindan is a Dwarf Elementalist, but Labetha is a human Elementalist). Physical Resistance: +16% (each).
Diana: Brissa and Aenain both with Basic Air Magic (both babies are Genie Elementalists so I can't switch them from Diana). Magic Resistance: +18% (each).
Neoka: Ciele and Gelare both with Basic Water Magic (both babies are Elf Elementalists so I can't switch them from Neoka). Poison Resistance: +20% (each).
Xeona: Luna and Inteus with Basic Fire Magic (both babies are human Elementalists). Fire Resistance: +20% (each).

You'll notice that most of them are Elementalists, but I actually did a pretty good job dispersing them (kind of like the Planeswalkers).

Anyway, just wanted to mention them since we forgot about them...

/C\/C\

HOMM3 Skills under Consideration of Changing
 

Okay, I've been reviewing some of the HOMM3 Skills and what I did with bonuses that had no analog in King's Bounty.

Here is the current list of skills I'm considering changing:

HOMM3 Tactics: Attack / Defense: Skill Level * Child Level = +%

I'm thinking of changing this such that:

1. Basic Tactics: -1 Speed or Initiative of Enemy Units
2. Advanced Tactics: -1 Speed AND Initiative of Enemy Units

For Basic Tactics I'd pick speed first, then if another child with the same wife had Basic Tactics I'd then pick initiative.

There are plenty of items / babies that add to Attack / Defense (although few to both) so I think this would be better. Also for enemy heroes with King's Bounty Tactics I essentially had them drop your speed so this would be in line with what I did with them.

There are currently 17 children with Basic Tactics and 1 with Advanced Tactics.

Example 1: Erdamon (Orcelyn) Basic Tactics: -1 Speed or Initiative
Example 2: Boragus (Orcelyn) Basic Tactics: -1 Initiative or Speed (opposite of Erdaman's selection since same wife)
Example 3: Lacus (Diana) Advanced Tactics: -1 Speed AND Initiative

All wives have at least 1 child with Basic Tactics, while most have 2.


HOMM3 Scouting: Rage: 2 * Skill Level * Child Level = +%
Change to: Enemy Defense: -Skill Level * Child Level = -%

Other stats to consider: Enemy Critical Hit

There are currently 6 children with Basic Scouting and 2 children with Advanced Scouting.

Example 1: Aeris (Neoka) Basic Scouting = -1 * 10 = -10%
Example 2: Fiona (Xeona) Advanced Scouting = -2 * 10 = -20%

Xeona has 2 babies with Advanced Scouting and 1 with Basic Scouting, so probability of getting -40% Enemy Defense: 2 / 27 * 1 / 26 = 0.28% or 1 in 351 games; probability of getting -50% Enemy Defense: 2 / 27 * 1 / 26 * 1 / 25 = 0.0114% or 1 in 8775 games.


HOMM3 Eagle Eye: Intellect: 1.5 * Skill Level * Child Level = +%
Change to: Enemy Resistance (type based on wife): -2 * Skill Level * Child Level = -%

There is 1 child with Basic Eagle Eye and 7 children with advanced Eagle Eye. Once again, there are plenty of items that increase intellect, so this is probably not too bad of a change.

Example 1: Ash (Xeona) Basic Eagle Eye: -2 * 1 * 10 = -20% Fire Resistance.
Example 2: Malcom (Gerda) Advanced Eagle Eye: -2 * 2 * 8 = -32%, but Gerda is Resist All, so divide by 4 for each main (excludes astral) resistance so Enemy Resist All: -8%.

Gerda has two babies with Advanced Eagle Eye, so probably of getting -16% Enemy Resist All: 2 / 19 * 1 / 18 = 0.58% or 1 in 171 games.

That would probably be okay.

At this stage, I'm just considering these, although the Tactics one I think I will change for sure.

You know, another thought that I just had (and would help prevent duplication of child bonuses) is to have an alternate for a skill. For example, Xeona has 5 Children with Basic Tactics. So I could have 1 of the children keep the original bonus!

For example:

HOMM3 Tactics Alternate #1: Attack / Defense: Skill Level * Child Level = +%
HOMM3 Tactics Alternate #2: Basic Tactics: -1 Speed or Initiative of Enemy Units; Advanced Tactics: -1 Speed AND Initiative of Enemy Units

So that way when a wife has multiple children with the same bonus there is an alternate variant of that HOMM3 Skill to avoid overuse of that Skill.

Hmmm... this might be a really good idea!:cool:

Let me know your thoughts here - thanks!:-)

/C\/C\

Found small miss in wifes.txt for mirabella , in string sp_lead_footmn, `a` missing :-)
Got bored with rina and swapped to neoka, it`s interesting but i`m thinking neoka is better for warrior and huge hordes of not retaliating sprites/dryads and ancient ent teleported in enemy lines to entangle everyone, or all archer 100% crit army. But on other hand neoka have many kids with int related bonuses so it`s a gamble :-)
Orcelyn would be also interesting if orcs werent so inferior compared to their CW edition cousins :-D
But any way this is great mod, and many interesting ideas and solutions.
Still w8ing on some idea for kid with tower lowering stats ( i just tried to suppress dwarf hammer and got my ass handed to me :-P

Okay - duh Spear of Rage!
 

Okay, I just purchased the Spear of Rage so there's already a bonus!

Now just have to find an appropriate skill! I don't think this will be a problem to add this one...

/C\/C\

Great catch with footmn and great comments!
 

Great catch! Just corrected it and it'll be in the next update!

Bye Rina! Sorry you had to go! :(

Hello, Neoka! Hopefully you'll have fun with her! Don't forget you have to get the Tree's permission to have kids with her!

You know I've been toying with the Shaman's Dancing Axes right now. I have a test build where it resurrects Orc allies, then heals allies with the remaining energy, and then damages the remaining enemies with the last bit of energy, but I can't get it to damage the remaining enemies properly (it's either too much or too little and I can't quite figure out how the Attack damage library works). Anyway, that's just an experiment, I want something to happen with the extra energy from the Dancing Axes attack, but I haven't figured out a good solution, yet.

Got any Orc improvement ideas (without adding CW adrenaline)? I was thinking of having the Healing Totem dispel bad spells on your units and might increase the radius +1. The Death Totem I might increase the radius +1 as well and maybe it should do something else.

Hmmm... what to do with those Orcs!

Thanks! Glad you're enjoying it! :grin:

Yah, I need to think more about the Towers...

Yep, suppressing items in general is a lot tougher and the Tower's spells are attuned to their allies and you, the enemy! I was actually thinking if I could do the same thing for enemy heroes - hmmm...

I've got Diana now (I basically go in wife order when I play: Rina -> Feanora -> Mirabella -> Gerda -> Orcelyn -> Diana -> Neoka -> Xeona) and just started getting a couple of kills (no kids, yet). Once I get 4 kids then I switch to the next wife so that I can double check the children and make sure their bonuses work, etc. I got Royal Thorns in the game (I rarely see them) and so I'm going to have fun with them and Diana gives bonuses to all Thorns (as well as other units including Dragonflies, Sprites / Fairies, Dryads, Unicorns, and Ents) and goes well with Neoka since Sprites, Lake Fairies, Dryads, and Ents get bonuses from her, too!

Okay, back to playing...

/C\/C\

Yea i forgot about permission form tree to get kids with neoka (you cant even sleep with your wife without other`s approval :-) and had 4 fights before kissing her first time, so no big miss there.
I`we always seen orcs as horde, and great in big numbers so no mage/orc build for me. But as for some improvements, hm . . . could you convert orc abilities form CW witout adrenaline : kid that gives bonus to ogre`s give them drain ability, for veteran orcs miss chance . other kid that gives bonus to veterans give them vicious strike (so not to have 2 kids with same bonus). This is big change to orcelyn but i cant think of anything else to help that race except already made changes in AP/CW. Nice idea to strenghten shamans totems/dancing axes, but what about other orc units ? They have almost nothing to boost : goblins nothing, orcs only running , ogre only rage so not much to work with on them since they dont have anything to start with :-( Poor orcs.

Hey Matt Q :
did you on purpose made gift of life to take 2 turns to resurrect plant you need ? I tried some ents with neoka, and first move is to summon some unit, then with that unit you need to summon on some killed unit, and then you can use first summoned unit to resurrect starting ent . . . It takes to much time, and lose 2 whole turns with 2 units. Why not activate gift of life on first unit after summoning in way that `I summoned you, now you sacrifice yourself to revive me`, but lower resurrected % maybe. As it is now, to resurrect 1 plant, we need 2 killed units near for summoning, and 2 turns to actually do it.

I sure did!
 

I sure did! By having them use their Sowing to enable their Gift of Life your resurrection ability is limited by the number of corpses on the battlefield. If there are no corpses then no Gift of Life. Also note that when a Thorn uses its Gift of Life, that there is no corpse generated (it is totally absorbed by the plant it heals). This makes the use of Thorns a lot more strategic for resurrection purposes. There are plenty of Thorn Generators that don't need a corpse to create the Thorns (Ents, Dryads, and Royal Thorns) and so even though it takes more time you should be able to get some Thorns to heal your plants before finishing off the combat.

It can still be exploited somewhat if you keep a non-retaliator stack alive and let it keep killing your generated Thorns for fresh corpses. The only way to prevent this issue would be to change all the Thorn Generating abilities to have charges. I've gone back and forth here experimenting with making them charges and reloadable and because Thorns are mowed down so easily that you need a steady stream of them (numbers!) for them to be effective I decided to keep that capability reloadable. This is an advantage to entice people to play with plants.

/C\/C\

I dont think you understood what i was implying.
Lets say thorn hunters cast summon on some corpse, but if you want to use gift of life to resurrect starting unit you need 1 more corpse to use summon thorn by already summoned. When use summon plant i dont need ability to heal summoned unit, but one i`m taking with me in next battle.
Why not activate gift of life in reverse order, unit that summoned stack can sacrifice it to resurrect itself. This is most problem with thorns, as you said many gift of life using units dont need it but consider this : dryads dont need that ability they summon meat shields, royal thorn also with speed 1(2 at best) summon minions and send them to fight then if need be those units use summon and return to heal royal thorns. For ents there is even less need for res with their tree of life ability. So most vunerable are basic units thorn warriors/hunters and need for to heal 1 stack you need 2 corpses.
I understand that you wanted to make this limited in battle, but it just seem to complicated for simple way of keeping plants alive since they have no active skills/mass aoe dmg or passive like stun/shock. They are useful in large numbers but that`s it. ANd are so vunerable, that`s why i asked about this way of using gitf of life.

Oh - I think I get what you'e saying now...
 

Oh!

I think I understand what you're saying. You're saying you want Thorn-Hunters and Thorn Warriors when they use there Sowing ability to have the created Thorn have its Gift of Life ability enabled since it used a corpse to generate it. All other Thorn generators would stay the way they are.

This is an interesting idea. For the AI, they both would run to the nearest high level plant and use their Gift of Life ability (that's pretty much how I programmed it). For people, you wouldn't sacrifice your starting Thorn because then that'd be a loss in combat that you wouldn't want, but you would probably heal them with the new unit once you got the chance if you needn't it.

Hmmm... I guess this would be okay and it would help the AI more, too. Since it would only apply to Thorn-Hunters and Thorn Warriors I guess it wouldn't be exploited by human players since they couldn't sacrifice their starting Thorns if they wanted to minimize losses and it would be easier (at the beginning of the game) to use Thorns and try to heal them.

I'll think about this some more, but it seems like this idea would be okay to implement...

Thanks for the idea!:-)

O_O Wow, I leave for a few months and look what happens, nice work man!! seems I have allot to read!

Great job!!

Hello ppl :-)
Matt i checked your last update, and i like upgraded orcs but it`s still not changed type of playing them like in cw. Thx for effort man, i`m not complaining just saying units need more then higher resistances to be interesting to play. Modified dancing axes great job, it reports error every time i use it but `ignore` and it works resurrecting orc troops :-)

I just now noticed something on matter i played this game for almost 1 whole year. With warrior anger skill you get more rage from inquisitor holy rage ability, basic is 5-10 but with 3rd lvl anger it goes up to 10-20 :-) Why didnt they copy this to AP/CW hero skill? There anger is available to all hero classes.

As for mod it self, i played 2 whole games mage (rina, feanora,diana,neoka) and warrior tried (rina, feanora, mirabella, orcalyn, gerda, neoka, xeona . . . yea i know, divorces alone costed me leg and a half :-) And it works great, late game hero fights are really tough and interesting. I still think enemy hero -resistance% are to high, but no1 is forcing me to play impossible no loss in first place :-)
Great job man, keep it up.
On side note, are you planing to make something similar for AP/CW or will you w8 for WotN and just make mod when new game come out ?

I implented the Holy Anger -> Inquisitor's change!
 

Well, maybe it's just a start! Think of some ideas! I keep going back to the totems, but that is focusing too much on Shamans.

Here's an idea, by the way (I don't know how to implement this, but its a thought):

When an Orc troop gets a critical hit, all Orc troops get some kind of bonus - kind of like "inspiring hit" or something like that.

I'll look into the Dancing Axes problem - I did play test it and that error occurs if EN(G)_BATTLE.LNG is not updated. Maybe I forgot to include it in the update? I'll look into it...

I decided to implement it that way!:cool:

Also, note that they are also affected by combat duration so you can't exploit it...

Exactly - Impossible is meant to be Impossible... or at least really hard!:grin:

Wow! You play fast! Of course I'd go faster if I wasn't constantly evaluating and trying to implement things to make it better!:-)

Have you seen the Bone Dragons use their new ability, yet? I actually noticed a situation where it will look for a label that doesn't exist (I've only seen it once so far) when they Sheep a unit. I've got a fix for that one I'll send out soon...

I sure will - the Tomes of HOMM3 mod. Basically all the babies will become items that are books or tomes that are either artifacts or regalia or something like that.

I'll also implement all the other changes if they are merited, but I'll need to review all the changes between the games as well and then transfer the content over.

I'm hoping most of it will transfer fairly readily since, from what I can tell, is that almost all the new AP/CW content are in addon_*.LUA files, etc.

I'll probably focus on CW, but I'm hoping that the CW changes will also work in AP.

I'll also have to review all the skills since they are markedly different and determine if any changes are needed there. I thought that the AP and CW skill trees were better than the TL ones.

The enemy hero evaluation and update with a new system will take a while to implement because there are so many of them. It took me a month to slog through all the enemy heroes and update them with my new enemy hero system. I'll create a new system based on the skill trees in AP/CW so that they mirror your skill tree once again. What's nice about that, though, is I'll make it a separate mini mod like I've done here so that you can play with just updated heroes if you so desire.

In the meantime, I need to stay focused on this mod until it is ready for the beta phase - I'm almost there - just need to get my first Xe baby (although you already have so it's probably okay) and then I think we can transition this mod to the beta phase where people can download it and start playing it!

Thanks for all the awesome comments - when you play in a vacuum you get a little used to the way things are and it is great to get outside people to play and get you to think about things differently!

By the way, which level were you when you fought Xe and with what troop lineup?

I just made it to level 20 and unfortunately, I use Neoka with Elves, which Xe burns with alacrity! Fortunately I was able to find some Ancient Ents to stave off being defeated. My first lineup had Girlie Power (Sprites, Lake Faries, and Dryads), Ents, and Hunters and I got dusted. I experimented with replacing Hunters with Elves or Uni's, but she kept kicking my tail! So I figured I'd look around Demonis and see if I could find some Ancient Ents and got lucky! I was also just level 19, but found an experience shrine to get the next level and get a good 1000 point boost to Leadership and the capability to hire more units. Girlie Power, Elves, and Ancient Ents I survived, but everyone got killed except my Ancient Ents - whew! She is tough if you're low-level and fighting her with flammable troops!:)

What I really like is that you can pretty much gauge how well you're going to do just by comparing your level to the enemy hero. If your quite a few levels below them then you best get ready for a knock-down, drag-out fight and be prepared to get handed!

I'll look into the error message with the missing label (I probably just forgot to include the new EN(G)_BATTLE.LNG) and also think some more about Orcs.

I'm glad the Shaman Dancing Axes isn't too powerful - did you use it much when you played Orcelyn to heal your Orc troops? About the only way I can see it being exploited is if you keep a troop generator alive (pretty much just Royal Thorns, Dryads, Druids, and Ents / Ancient Ents) and keep killing the generated troops to resurrect all your Orcs. I don't have a solution to that right now...

Allright let me get back to fixing those errors and keep providing comments - that's the only way to make this mod better!:grin:

What makes playing this is different type of units, and many possible builds/tactics . . . so `inspiring hit` for orcs meh :-( Their adrenaline was great idea in CW and no matter what ppl say, it changed AP much and was worth new playthrough. What did you plan for inspiring hit ? higer stats, or . . . what would be bonus for other orcs after 1 unit crit?
Inquisitor was nice touch :-) I didnt even noticed it till late game since with warrior rage isn`t big issue, i just used it once when i had no rage and got 18 with WTF is this face :-)
I think we need more difficulty lvl`s with messages to players on game start, keep easy as it is (`go play minesweeper`) , normal (`this is really just tutorial`) , hard (`veteran KB players easy mod`) , impossible (`veteran KB players normal mod`) , no loss impossible (`tasting mod for army generals etc`) , truly impossible (`bend over and say A mod for masochist`here in first location before you can move to next stage will be placed stack of 100 black dragons) :-D
Haven`t seen new bone dragon ability since i already cleared undead lands when i upgraded mod with your latest addon.
I got to Xeona but didnt beat her with no loss (i think it`s really impossible to do it), i did it on 24th lvl (25k lds), with diana +ancient ent/thorn hunter/girl power team , i had blackthorn crown (i changed it to give 20% dmg to ents, 50% to thorns and 1 initiative to all plants) poison dagger , great for huge stacks of low lvl units, and really buffed up rage spirits.
I didnt check this but does enemy hero mana regen also stop on 20 battle turn? Because 20% mana regen/turn is sick. I didnt defeat her without loss, i just did it to pick her and see how she works :-( It`s f...ed up battle, but i did it on pure power and rage spirits with warrior, i dont know your hero class, but i think with mage it might be doable without loss, but for paladin i`m not so sure.
As for shamans dancing axes change it so it works only on living enemy so it`s not overpowered (as you said leaving small enemy troop to resurrect army on summons will be first thing many old players will think off :-) Or at least make it so not usable on undead (plants are some kind of living things, but zombies not so much :-D

I got save that allowed me to pick all wives, so i try some different combinations just for fun and found weird info. Lds for wives is wrong : rina give bonus for only 4 units and have lowest -6% lds, feanora is right behind her. Shouldnt this be other way around ? Mirabella give -8lds% for all humans including robbers 1&2 and griffins, and gerda only 5 dwarf units for same bonus ( i thought to add cyclops for gerda unit bonus and change it to 9%) , same thing for neoka/diana both give bonus to 11/12 units and -9/-10%lds, higher then other wives. That`s why i thought to change that stats : for gerda add cyclops and set it to -10% lds , rina add pirates -11%lds , xeona add red and black dragons for -5%lds, emerald dragon for neoka/diana (remove dragonflies form her, never use them anyway) -5%lds. Tis will mean for every 20 dragons you get to lead 1 more, not much but it would be useful when missing small amount lds between 1 and 2 dragons.
Also fire spiders are demon in this mod, i`m not sure did you changed it or was it like that in original but you miss them in xeona -lds% list.

And towers in suppressing items battles are seriously overpowered. Couple examples : suppressing royal hammer 5att/-10% dwarf lds i had sprites with 14 initiative and tower still play first, how high is initiative for those things ??? And my mage have 44 int casting hell breath on some unit it get 65% fire dmg bonus, when tower cast same spell enemy unit get 150% fire dmg !!! a bit much i think. Upgrading archmage/druid staff to 3rd lvl same thing
1 more miss : warrior have bonus for fighting units iron fist skill, quick draw for archers, dark commander for all demon,orc,undead and you added bunch neutral units here (missed griffins) , mage have bonus for undead in necromancy and archmage for all mage type units. Question ? Why elves/dwarves missing for any kind of bonuses... i tried gerda and no matter what kids items i have, my initiative is crap, enemy heroes always play first with all army before i get turn. So how about adding elf/dwarf race bonuses to mind tree in place of diplomacy skill ?

Mana / Rage gain reduction applies to both you and the enemy hero
 

I'm not sure - I'm just throwing out ideas to help with the brainstorming.

You know, I wasn't a big fan of the Orcs overusing astral damage in CW. It was neat to have the Orcs and other units have new abilities in AP/CW, though, like you said.

I just need to think more about what makes sense for them.

I really like what I did with the plants in my mod and I'd like to find something similar to do to Orcs that fits them kind of like what I did with the Orc Shamans and their Dancing Axes.

I thought that the idea would be great to implement glad you enjoyed it!

Hah! That'd be funny!

Okay - maybe if you play again...

Love to see that word: impossible!:grin:

Wow! You had 25k Leadership?! Boy that must have been a crazy battle!

You know, I didn't really think about changing any of the items in the game - do you think that's better for the Blackthorn Crown?

The same rules apply so when Mana / Rage gain goes to 50% its for both you and the enemy hero, and same for 25 and 0%. That way after round 20 (with impossible difficulty, later rounds with easier difficulty levels) there is no more mana or rage gain for either side.

This is what makes the battles so much more fun and interesting and the mana regen helps them maintain their mana (just like you're probably maintaining yours) until the latter rounds. Sooner or later you both run out if it goes long enough!

I'm playing Paladin and I had his Holy Anger up to Level 3 so I had the +30 attack that the skill allows, plus the 15% Order Spell power that you get from it as well and Xeona's battle was pretty tough. You were a couple of levels higher than me, but its still hard since she's a mage and can double cast. I also made the AI better for spell caster's in general by optimizing spell placement for multi-unit damage spells and using a scoring system to aid in spell selection.

This is actually only my second Paladin game - I usually play mage just like you!

You know I had it that way at first and then decided to change it so that it worked on every one. That's why I called it "Titan Energy" because I kept thinking about how Seth created the Undead land and since the Orcs were created by the Titans then it kind of made sense - the Shaman's were tapping into Seth's Titan Energy when they used the ability.

Although, maybe I should just have it resurrect / heal when the damage is done to the living (no Undead and Plants like you mentioned and like I had it before), but still have it store that energy for use later like it works now. Then the list of generators for resurrection would be reduced to Druids since I made their Summon Bear a reloadable skill. Maybe that wouldn't be too bad since there aren't that many Druids in battles.

By the way, do you remember what your final level was and the level for your spirits in both games?

I'm just curious - I usually am able to make it to level 30 for my hero and my last game (Paladin) I had the spirits up to about level 35-37.

Right now in my current game I'm level 20 and I think Zerock and Sleem are both 19 (almost 20) and Lina and Death are 20 and 21 I think (both Lina and Death went up a level or 2 after Xeona's battle).

I like the pacing of the leveling better with the changes I made to the experience tables as both the original hero and spirit tables had inconsistencies in the level up experience delta. Now they are consistent and it seems smoother to me.

Well, thanks again for all the comments!

I'll keep working on fixing the current issues, and I'll see what ideas I can come up with for those orcs! :-)

/C\/C\

Interesting questions...
 

A lot of the bonuses fell out based on how easy it is to get each wife and what that wife's specialty was as well as the wife's level.

Here's the wife order and their level (price in WIFES.TXT)

Rina / Zombie Rina - 6
Feanora / Frog Feanora - 7
Mirabella - 8
Gerda - 8
Orcelyn - 9
Diana - 9
Neoka - 10
Xeona - 10

So that score above determines essentially all the bonuses the wife gets as well as her children.

The way the groups of units worked for a wife depended on her race and her profession as well. For Mirabella, Gerda, Orcelyn, Neoka, and Xeona their unit bonuses go with their races. For the other 3 wives it was more on profession and who they were that lended to which unit groups they picked. Units left out were typically ones that didn't really belong to any group - sorry for those units!

For Rina she was a Robber's wife so I thought her bonuses would apply to robbers and outlaws (like Barbarians are in a way). She's human, but I figured that the other human units wouldn't like her because of her Zombie duality. I guess there's not much incentive to keep her as a human anyway because of all her Zombie babies. But, the only way to have her have children is to keep her as Rina so you get to play units you might not necessarily play early in the game (I think it's fun to get Barbarians and then Bears with the Morale bonus) so I think it ends up working great for her and if you decide to stay with her after she has all 4 children, you're probably going to switch her to a Zombie to enjoy those bonuses.

By the way, Rina did use to have Pirates for a unit bonus, but I thought it was a little redundant with Mirabella for them both to have them. Maybe it's okay though, and I should reinstate Pirates with Rina. I'll think about that one.

For Feanora I thought that she would kind of be the champion of swamp and forest beasts so that why she gets the units she gets. For Frog Feanora, once again you only get to play her after you don't talk to her for 10 battles (and most likely after you get 4 kids) so then she gets a little bit of the darker creates for bonuses there.

For Mirabella, she's human and so I thought she'd be perfect for all humans and Pirates. I also though that since Griffins are so linked to humans that even though they were neutral that they also made sense. That ends up being a lot of units, but there are a lot of humans and I have to have Mirabella give bonuses to Pirates since she is one! And Griffins is only one more so she gets them, too!

For Gerda, there are only 5 Dwarf units in the game, so she'll get a boost from AP/CW, but I was limited by the Dwarf units in The Legend. She still has good bonuses if you get a baby with a Dwarf unit bonus or two. Dwarfs have low initiative, but better resistances so I guess that's the way it went with her. She's still good, though. Cyclops are better with Orcs than Dwarves (at least that's the way it was in HOMM3) so that probably colored me a bit with them.

For Orcelyn she gets Orcs so that's okay - quite a few Orc units so that works well for her.

For Diana she's a River Fairy so that's why I gave her Dragonflies (since they hang out near rivers) and the other unit choices - river fairy units! I actually considered her for the Green Dragon bonus, but they didn't really fit the river fairy motif (well with their attack on the Elves and all and the fact that they are from Ultrax with no rivers!) - plus Shiva has a pretty good Emerald Green Dragon bonus so if you're lucky you can get her to help out your EGD's.

Although, in HOMM3, Green Dragons were actually units in the Elf town so I really heavily considered Diana and Neoka to have an EGD bonus; however, in KB they were lumped with Red and Black Dragons on Ultrax so it seemed like it was too different.

For Neoka elves was the choice - lots of different Elf units in the game!

Lastly the same for Xeona and Demons. By the way, Rashka gets the Red Dragon bonus so that's okay.

I didn't mind leaving off a few units from the wives - like I mentioned they were meant to pick similar groups. Cyclops and Dragons are pretty much groups by themselves and so that's why none of the wives have bonuses specific to them, but some of their babies do. So they are covered, although there's no guarantee to get them!

Really? Looks like I missed them - they're supposed to get the bonus so I'll add them!

Doing all this stuff by hand is so error prone! I need to autogenerate this stuff somehow...

Well, you can't always be the fastest!:grin:

The Tower initiative is determined by the strength of the units you face. Same with their intellect. So their stats are autogenerated based on how strong your opponents are. Gremlins are also much stronger with magic than you are!:-)

I made them that strong on purpose so that you'd think twice about using those items and reducing that item's morale! Makes living items a lot more interesting!

The toughest ones are still easy to supress once you get to about level 27 or so - all the good ol' strategies apply to Friendly Gremlin Towers.

Well, you know it's called Dark Commander because it is meant to apply to "evil" units. So Demons, check; Undead, check; Orcs, maybe they're just misunderstood, but they still get a check! Griffins aren't evil at all, though, so they're not on the list. Sorry Griffies!:(

Werewolf Elves made it because of the dark werewolf motif. They are Elves, but they don't mind hanging out with Undead (tolerance) so they got the Dark Commander bonus! Way to go Werewolf Elves!:grin:

Well, with Necromancy I thought the Undead was a perfect fit for that skill giving them some kind of bonus. Archmage already added bonuses to mage units, I just fleshed it out a little more.

You know, they weren't any bonuses for Elves / Dwarves in the original skill tree, so that's why I made Training and Combat Readiness apply to all units (up through level 4 at skill level 3), and then they get the Leadership Reduction bonus from Glory as well as the Healer Health bonus. Also don't forget about the +2 Initiative and Speed that you can get first round from Onslaught. Iron Fist gives Dwarves a big bonus (unit not the race) and Ranged Specialist helps out both Elf and Dwarf units as well (+1 Initiative at Level 2!). Also Neoka and Gerda got the Elves / Dwarves covered. Lastly, sorry but Dwarves are notoriously slow anyway, but look they can get +2-5 depending on the skills, wife, and babies. Also they get a pretty good Leadership Reduction bonus from that hammer!

And poor, Gerda, everyone dumps on her! :(

She's actually got some deceptively good baby bonuses - Synca with Hasted Giants is awesome!:) But if you want her units to have high initiative, then you got to get the skills I mentioned above - Alchemists and Cannoneers do have good initiative. You should be able to get that up to the 9 to 10 range, which is pretty good!

Plus any initiative deficiency is easily rectified in combat with a Phoenix!:)

Gerda's playing strategy is just different than some of the other wives' - why? Well, you know, Gerda is just a different kind of woman!;)When's her beard coming in, again?!:grin:

I also think I made the Diplomacy Skill better - you can get a lot of units from it if you get it to level 3!

So that's why things are the way they are. A few units are left out here and there on some of the skills and wife bonuses, but there are global bonuses that apply to every unit (so no one is really left out!) and there is a baby out there for every unit as well! You just got to get lucky to get them!;)

Also I tried to stay true to a skill even though I changed it a bit or added more bonuses. Maybe an Elf- or Dwarf-specific bonus will make more sense in AP/CW when I get to modding those...

Hope that explains why I made some of the decisions I made and why things are the way are...

:grin:

/C\/C\

Yea , implementing new orc`s abilities in KB-tL will be pain in the ass :-(
I didnt beat xeona in mage play, but in warrior, that`s why i had 25k lds, with diana it goes to ridiculous stacks of fairies and thorns :-) i havent finished that games, since i got looses in xeona battle, so i`m thinking how to kill her and continue on my no loss game, that`s why i loaded save before to get gerda and try with her and -40% lds on dwarf race (with royal hammer and mithril shield and glory 3lvl). In CW i changed some items to make them useful lategame, added 2 lvl`s to berserkers axe (+15/20/25% melee dmg) , made new composite item form +exp% small items , added new lvl for runic sword, and such. So i changed here blackthorn crown since it`s useless witout thorns, andi didnt have any royals in my game, so i added ents in item bonus but with lower dmg bonus.
And i figured out that resurrection have nothing on gizmo in managing no loss, my mage with 43 int resurrect spell 3400 hp/36mana , my warrior 50 rage gizmo resurrect 6 times for 2500 hp :-)

OK i get it what you made with wife lds bonuses gameplay wise, but still doesnt seem fair. Lets say some1 want undead play andgo about with other wifes and when get to demonis/gray wasteland to buy his army rin gives him lowest lds bonus of all wives in game :-(

Dark commander ok for undead/demon/orc race but you put hyena spiders and snakes there also, so that`s why i asked for griffins.

I didnt mean more lowering lds for dwarfs since gerda,royal hammer,mithril shield, glory it goes to -48lds% for dwarf race, but they still have horrible movement/initiative , and almost none in gerda kids gives bonus dmg for melee units but have lost sp_power_int , dwarf are fighting race and they have no mage units, so why so much spell dmg bonuses in her kids ?

Good conversation!
 

Yah, who knows, maybe one of us will think of something brilliant! The mice in my brain are running on their wheels!:grin:

You might just wait for Xeona a little bit. You know who I thought might work well against her battle might be Orcelyn and Orcs. Although Gerda is not a bad choice either. It certainly is true what you say, though, when you don't get to go first. Once again, though, it becomes too easy if you always go first!

By the way, which heroes have been the toughest for you so far? I know you didn't like Sonya too much the first time you faced her!

My previous game, I made the mistake of talking to Raab Sotten too early (before I had gotten the Torn Digor Meghard quest) because I wanted to use his rage pool to maximize my rage before fighting Xe. I ended up fighting him with just Demons because everyone else was getting killed too easily and I was running out of battles to fight!

Also the Evil Book is a bit surprising if you're not ready for it!

I don't even know how to add item upgrades! You got me on that one!:grin:

If you want to make a list of item changes, then I'd gladly implement them if they make sense for my mod!

Yah, Gizmo is a necessity, but it's useful for all classes. I kind of wanted the hero to have more reliance on his rage box. Gizmo was one of the most challenging to get its AI right. You don't know how many hours I spent on it implementing its "Proximity/Priority Based Unit Selection" system! By the way, Gizmo can go all the way up to 9 charges if you focus on it! Of course there's no guarantee it'll always resurrect your guys!

I think all the spirits, now, have really good abilities - I tend to focus on the damage ones. I'm not a big fan of Zerock's Wall, Sleem's Glot, or Lina's Ice Thorns, but they are a lot better now if you decide to use them. Also, they are really good abilities so I do pick them sooner or later (especially Glot for protecting against mega damage).

Resurrection is still useful, obviously, since you have control over it. I usually let Gizmo Resurrect the higher level units and then I cast Resurrect on the lower level ones. Gizmo and the spell actually go very well together.

Yah, well that's the drawback of the early wives - they might not be as powerful (now you know why I had all that Undead Leadership bonus to Rina's babies!). They are still like items I guess (all the wives shake their heads at me in disapproval!) in that the ones you get earlier aren't as powerful as the ones you get later! Still, though, each one has their charms!;)

Both Neoka and Xeona are work to get - especially Xe!

Yah, hyena's, snakes, and spiders all get the "evil" tag because their notoriety in the real world, not to mention make believe! Once again, sorry Griffies!:-P

If you can think of a good skill to add Griffins to, all be all ears!

By the way, Inquisition came close to being not only a bonus for Priests and Inquisitors, but all unit pairs. I decided against it, but it would have been all the unit pairs: Robbers / Marauders, Barbarians / Berserkers, Beholders / Evil Beholders, etc. In the end, though, I decided against it because it seemed like it was too many units and I guess they didn't really have anything to do with Inquisition!

Hmmm... maybe add Griffins to Inquisition? That actually might not be a bad idea since they go well with humans! Let me think about it some more...

Yah, I just wanted to point out the ample leadership bonus as a positive that they get.

The drawback of trying to be true to HOMM3 is that when it came to picking which children would go to which wife, a lot of the same class of baby went to the same wife. For example, Neoka got most of the Druids and Rangers from HOMM3. Since these heroes came from the Elf town, their skills focused on those to help shooters and magic users, etc. Some of this has translated over nicely, I think, but it does put limitations on which children go to which wife.

By the way, when I work on Tomes of HOMM3, all babies (and wives, too) will have a price = 10 so that they get the max bonus. Well, I guess it won't be 10 since you can sell them, but some multiple of 10 like 1000 or 10000 or so (and then I'll just scale it). Each wife will become a tome with their bonuses in this mod for AP/CW (part of the story!). Feanora can truely be for Lizardmen! And imagine what I can do with her Lizardmen/women babies when I convert them to tomes! Troglodyte babies -> tomes, too! Also, the Tomes won't be limited except by how the game generates them. That'll be a lot of fun once I start working on that!:grin:

Yah, a lot of the HOMM3 Heroes have Wisdom for a skill (all the babies with sp_power_int have at least Basic Wisdom as one of their skills). In HOMM3 Wisdom was used for learning spells of a certain level. Unfortunately, that is taken care of by the Order, Distortion, and Chaos skills and so this was what I came up with.

You know, I just toyed with making a baby with Wisdom and a Spell bonus to transition their wisdom skill to their spell bonus! In the end, though, I decided against it, but this is how it would have worked:

Example 1:

Diana baby Solmyr:
Basic Wisdom - Intelligence Spell Power: +18%
Basic Sorcery - Spell Power: +18%
Chain Lightning - Lightning: +18% Damage, +18% Shock, +1 round

Change to:
Basic Sorcery - Spell Power: +18%
Chain Lightning 2 - Lightning: +36% Damage, +36% Shock, +2 rounds

Example 2:
Gerda baby Alamar:
Basic Wisdom - Intelligence Spell Power: +16%
Basic Scholar - Intelligence Power Factor: +4%/6.5 Intellect
Resurrection - +16%

Change to:
Basic Scholar - Intelligence Power Factor: +4%/6.5 Intellect
Resurrection 2 - +32%

Example 3:
Neoka baby Ciele:
Basic Wisdom - Intelligence Spell Power: +20%
Basic Water Magic - Poison Resistance: +20%
Magic Arrow - Magic Pole Axe: +20%

Change to:
Basic Water Magic - Poison Resistance: +20%
Magic Arrow 2 - Magic Pole Axe: +40%

It seemed like, though, that these bonuses would be too large for an individual spell so I decided against it, but I had already made the changes and decided to change it back! I've actually done this twice now! The last time I did it was about 4 months ago!

Oh decisions, decisions!

I have to continually resist that urge to pump some things up! I do use the amount of damage units do, though, as a guide to how much damage you should be doing with spells, etc. at a certain point in the game.

Well, this is quite a nice conversation that we've got going!:grin:

/C\/C\

More spell ideas...
 

Hey, by the way, I was thinking about Haste, Slow, and Battle Cry and I was thinking that having Haste / Slow change speed and Battle Cry just initiative seems to be too little.

So I was thinking of having Haste increase both speed and initiative, Slow doing the opposite and changing Battle Cry to increase Morale.

I was thinking that this would make all 3 spells more useful and interesting.

What do you think?

I also didn't realize that a few unit abilities (like Demon Pentagramm) can change morale so I now think I know how to implement decreasing morale during long combats. If I did implement it, I'd make it apply to all units on the battlefield that are affected by morale (Undead aren't as well as Golems, and maybe I wouldn't include Plants either since maybe they don't get tired).

Also, one thing of note is that the game does not apply morale bonuses (or penalties for that matter) to summoned units. If I implemented the above I'd have to think about what to do about these summoned units. Maybe since they are new neutral morale would be okay, and then the next time the morale decrease occurred they'd be affected.

Anyway, just some more thoughts that the hamster spinning the wheel inside my brain wanted me to type!;)

/C\/C\

Orc Catapult New Ability Idea...
 

Okay, I've thought of a new ability for the Orc Catapult that I thought might be interesting...

Fire Boiled Oil - it would work similar to Oil Fog, but have splash damage such that it would hit 7 hexes, do a small amount of fire damage (like Oil Fog) and make it such that the hit targets' Fire Resistance decreased a certain amount. This would also make their Fire Missile ability do more damage if they targeted a unit with this affect on them. Plus I might have it add 1 to the number of rounds a unit is burned (hey I might do that for Oil Fog, too - Hmmm...).

Typical 3 turn effect rules would apply, and it would probably have the same reload time as Fire Missile so that they could be used one after another.

What do you think?

/C\/C\

New Orc (race) Ability Brainstorming Idea
 

Okay, the ideas are starting to pop into my head!

I was thinking something along the lines of allowing an Orc unit (not sure which one - maybe Furious Goblin or Regular Goblin) to set a trap on the battlefield.

It would work similar to Trap, but I would probably make it such that they could set a fire trap, poison trap, or magic trap - maybe all 3 (kind of like the Alchemist's potions) on a hex adjacent to them on the battlefield. This would probably be good for the Goblin since they are ranged.

Anyway, what do you think?

/C\/C\

New Ogre Ability - Clobber!
 

Boy, the hamster is running fast now!

Here's another new ability: this one for the Ogre - Clobber!

Not exactly sure what it would do, but Stun is part of it. Probably 2x damage or something like that (I guess that would be like a critical hit). It might also knock the target back (kind of like a combination of the Cyclop's abilities).

Anyway, just a thought...

/C\/C\

Another New Catapult Ability Idea - Flash!
 

Run hamster, run!

Okay another new Catapult ability, not sure what to call it, but Flash comes to mind. It would operate like Blind where the Catapult could fire a projectile at a unit that could blind them with a bright flash!

Hmmm... What'd ya think?

/C\/C\

Brainstorming Ability Idea for Orc / Veteran Orc
 

Okay - I've got one more brainstorming idea for Orcs / Veteran Orcs.

I thought that since they have a shield, maybe they could have a chance to block a certain percentage of damage. I guess the ability would be called block or something like that and the Orc / Veteran Orc could use their shield to block an attack.

I guess it would be more like a feature than an ability since they would execute it when they were attacked.

Thoughts?

/C\/C\

Another One - Fire Rage!
 

Okay the hamster gave me one more idea!

Once again for Orcs / Veteran Ocs - it would be called Fire Rage or something like that where the Orc goes into a fit of Rage and adds fire damage to its attack for 3 rounds (kind of like Hell Breath I guess).

Thoughts?

/C\/C\

And another - Furious for Furious Goblins!
 

Oh - another!

This ability will put the Furious in Furious Goblins!

The ability would be simply called Furious where they would gain unlimited retaliation for a turn or two (maybe 3) and would be a charged skill (maybe just 1 or 2 charges max).

They are Furious Goblins after all!

Thoughts?

/C\/C\

I think xoena might be doable with mass dwarf army giants jumping around, and alchemist poisoning all over place. gizmo for resurrecting, but i need some fast unit to counter demoness swap. Griffins maybe, or snakes (i have nsake boots and snake ring so it might be interesting). Here poisoning and burning works differently then AP/CW so it`s not that useful.
Annoying heroes : xeona , sonya (solo black dragons with mirror shield and wizard mantle it`s doable) , necromancer hero in undead lands with 40 int was boring as f..k but also managable (did him with mirabella full human army and 400 griffins 52lds/140hp). I didnt have a single kid with bonus exp in battle so my spirits arent much higer lvl then with mage, but i pick different skills so they play big part with 200 rage pool :-) maxed black hole, falling rocks 65% stun and gizmo for resurrect galore.
Ill make files just of my item changes and send you to check out, but cant do it today.
Glot shell is interesting to use if you have some unit like my giants griffin combo i kick griffins to aggro in middle of enemy, but teleport giant close glot shell his ass, and let him jump to hearths content, wall is great for making funnel on enemy army with 8000 hp, and 2 rest is spamable against fast units (example elf werevulf hero in underground on island valley of 100 rivers, all his units have 6-7 speed, so i send griffins 1 round to pull them and cast wall, black hole,wall and place girffins in space between walls to block and have fun. Ice thorns i never really used :-(

Bonuses for babies are nice, and it great to have such variety but looking in general for expl neoka/gerda : neoka have 6 kids with +dmg% for all melee units , gerda have none.

Changing spells hm . . . i dont think is good idea : look at your new double casting enemy heroes, i had fight with some item that got me mass deffensles and mass weakness got my fairy/sprites/dryads army to 0 defense and 0-0 dmg for whooping 5 turns thank you very much infinite tower intellect bonus :-) If you want to change spells how about this ideas : holy rage, magic shield, poison touch spells. Explanation , holy rage like inquisitors ability to replace demon slayer and give bonus dmg against demon+undead and some small rage amount 10%/20%/20%mass bonus dmg + intellect bonus per spell lvl. Magic shield like archmages ability but to lower dmg to unit 25%/50%/50%+immunity to spells, like black dragon. Poison touch (replace poison skull) like hell breath just to add poison dmg useful against dragons/demons (this would be great in AP/CW since there poisoning burning at least work on some constant , in tL i poison some stack of 800 bowman, and next turn only 1 dies ... yea right).

Oil keg for catapult nice idea, if you only could find how burning works in AP/CW and transfer it here. Flash is like mechanics blinding bomb in AP/CW right ?
Trap would be better for furious goblins since they run around battlefield regular goblins are range on need for them to lost turn to place trap that enemy might never come near :-) Furious for them, not so sure i never seen them as much dmg dealers, my main dmg are veterans/orcs, goblin range, shaman support and ogres for tanking and playing tough guy, so almost never used furious in tL (in AP they had greed to dig through corpses like marauder, and insolence) but i think in great enough numbers even furious goblins could be useful.
For ogre i thought something similar, like troll malevolence in AP/CW, it would be nice to use him to stop dragons and other flying creatures.
Block for orcs/veterans is miss chance , female troops have it, so why not battle crazy orcs. How much miss % did you think to give them ? Fire rage-burning blood better :-)

Thanks for the files - I'll check them out later when I have time!
 

Actually the way it works in my mod is far superior than AP/CW or the TL original system - it is based on damage. This is under the hood so it wouldn't be noticed unless you carefully studied it.

In AP/CW it is based on the number of units in a stack that the effect is applied to and had nothing to do with damage - I personally hate that system because you can have 1 Royal Snake causing 1000's of points of damage to a stack of units with just a poison infliction. Total nonsense!

The way it works in my mod it is based on damage done and then mitigation by resistance and then decays at half damage for the duration of the effect - here are a couple of examples:

Example 1: Imps do 1000 damage to troop with 0 Fire Resistance with a 15% chance to burn. So there is a 15% chance that the troop will get the effect burn. If they do get the effect burn, then on their next turn, they'll get 500 damage, then 250, and then 125 for a total damage of 1875 damage over 3 rounds! That's almost twice as much damage!

Example 2: Red Dragons do 2000 damage to troop with 10% Fire Resistance with a 25% chance to burn. So there is a 15% chance the troop will get the effect burn. If they do get the effect burn, then the damage is reduced by 10% and applied so it would be 1800 damage then effect burn. On that troop's turn the damage would be halved to 900 and then 10% reduction so it would 810 then 364 (I think it rounds down) and lastly 164 for a total of 3138 damage over 3 turns!

Example 3: Black Dragons do 3000 damage to a troop with -50% fire Resistance and have a 35% chance to burn. So the chance to burn is 85% and damage is increased 50% so they do 4500 damage. If the troop gets the effect burn, then the damage is reduced to half, but then increased 50% due to the resistance so it would be 4500 / 2 * 1.5 = 3375 damage, then 2531, and lastly 1898 damage for a whopping total of 12304 over 3 turns!

I'm actually very proud of this system and it is far superior to either TL or AP/CW since it is based on the attacker's damage and the defender's resistance. It does not use an arbitrary value like TL or AP/CW!

This is something, though, that nobody notices unless they really study it.

Great to hear you using these things! By the way, it sounds like your Griffins are doing quite well without a Dark Commander bonus! I assume you got the item that decreases their Leadership Requirement.

Okay - thanks for the files! I'll check them out when I have a chance later...

Good to hear you using Glot's Armor to absorb damage! And nice about Zerock's Wall! The big reason I don't use the wall is because of flyers, but it does have its uses!:-)

Ice Thorns I never got how to use it I guess. I hear some people say how much they love it, but it seems to get more in my way than the enemies!:-P

Hah! You sound a bit like when talking to Rina! I have no ring! :( Maybe we trade?!;)

As it turns out, though you've overlooked who the bonus applies to - Neoka only has 3 babies with Offense and 3 with Archery so that is 3 with +damage to melee units and 3 with +damage to ranged units. 1 baby, Ivor has both Offense and Archery so it is the equivalent of +damage for all units.

I know, still poor, Gerda!

Now you have a use for Dispel!

Yah - the TL system only applied 5-15 damage per turn regardless of stack size. My system is much better!:cool:

Those are interesting ideas, I'm just throwing out some as well. I guess for Physical Damage you have Stone Skin and all the rest Divine Armor. You know, I'm not sure if you've looked at SPELLS.LUA, but there are some spells in there that are not used, but do interesting things:

Star Force - is some kind of Magic Missile (spell_magic_missle_attack)!
spell_poison_resist_attack - poison resistance!
spell_fire_resist_attack - fire resistance!
Light Power - is some kind of Magic Fireball / Heal attack?! (spell_light_power_attack)

I've been so much working on my mod, but these have always been in the back of my mind - and your suggestions are good suggestions.

I'm wondering, though if it is one of those I'd like to have it, but then when you get it you find out that you don't use it that much things.

What I mean is that Stone Skin is pretty standard so that gets put in there. So you have Physical Resistance taken care of. Then you dabble with Fire and Poison and then you create Divine Armor. So are you really going to use the Fire Resistance and then Divine Armor in consecutive spell casts? So I'm just putting myself in the developers shoes and maybe that's why they decided not to implement it.

This is still great stuff to think about, though, and I'm seriously considering them!

Oh yah - it's been so long since I played so I forgot about that! I think Oil Keg / Burning Oil / Whatever I'm going to call it I'm seriously thinking about implementing!

Yah - good points! I'd probably just make them furious instead of having it have charges because a unit can only have 3 abilities and they already have run so only 2 left. I like putting trap on them like you suggest. So maybe they would have: 1) Run, 2) Fire Trap, 3) Poison Trap, and then 4) Furious as a unit feature.

I'm going to seriously consider that as well.

That's a pretty good idea. I keep thinking of how Giants like eating EGD's so maybe Ogre's like to eat all 3!:)

I was thinking for regular Orcs maybe 25% and then for Veteran Orcs 50%? Not sure, but I'm not too sanguine on implementing it - just an idea to hopefully help spur another!

Yah, I like the Fire Rage for them! That would be cool! Maybe another attack to poison their blades - not sure what to call that one!

Well thanks for posting your comments!

There a lot of good ideas swirling around - I hope to capture a few of them!:grin:

/C\/C\

What got me stuck about burning/poisoning is that i have thorns and sprites that have basic dmg 1-2/1-3 , with poison dagger and whip of ishara + blackthorn crown for thorns it goes to , 4-6/3-5 so approximately 25% dmg for thorns is fire 25% poison for sprites something similar, and after they burn/poison some enemy units it still make small amount of dmg in next turn.
That 800 bowman example : it was something around 820 i hit them with thorns and kill 80 ( 2800 dmg so it 700 fire, 700 poison, and 1400 physical and they catch burning) next turn only 1 dies and as you say it should make 350 dmg since they have 0 fire resistance. killing at least 10 units, not only 1. I`ll try to do same think fighting only with my thorns to check it out, but i think your setting got confused because +1 fire/poison items. Did you consider that option : having ancient ents with 100 dmg and using whip of ishara +1 fire dmg ? How would that work considering burning enemy units?

Griffins i had mirabella -8%lds / +8%hp, and kid_edric -18% /+18% hp, glory -10% , so basic 80 lds got to 52 , and with kid_rion +16%hp, and healer 3rd lvl it goes from basic 90hp to sweet 137 hp, 3rd lvl griffin :-D
So with griffin banner it would be ridiculous (28 lds griffin) :-P To bad it gives only lds for griffin, and no other bonus.

Neoka/gerda problem continuum :-) every lore we have about elves is that they are race of magic users and that they thrive on magic, and dwarfs are miners and used to get their hands dirty in fighting (pulling their beards, breaking beer mugs on each other heads etc), so that`s why i stuck me that neoka elf princess have bonus for so much battle oriented kids, and gerda for none.

@ Now you have a use for Dispel! Hm warrior with 3 sprite units, ancient ent and thorn hunter, yea i`ll dispel them right after i kill almost every enemy with rage spirits then spend 10 turns resurrecting my dead troops who were almost useless during whole battle :-)

Spell usage, and spells that are worthless . . . great thing about this game is options you have at disposal. 7 races, 70 spells, bunch of items and skills, and no1 actually know of possible army builds so it`s just question of how imaginative you are and how long you can stick with starting plan and restrictions : i decided to play all game with only this units/spell/rage spirit skills . . . then during that playthrough you figure some other interesting things. In AP there is tread crazy challenges where ppl get to really weird ideas to play this game, and just drop really interesting ideas and possibilities
So i think every unit/item/spell in this game some use and it`s place in order of things . . . except peasants they are f...ing useless :-)

Not sure what's going on with that +Poison or Fire Damage
 

Hmmm... that sounds weird - they shouldn't be doing any poisoning or burning with either of those items. Adding poison damage or fire damage has nothing to do with causing a poison or burn effect - it justs adds extra damage of that damage type to the unit's damage.

None of that should matter - like I said adding damage of a certain type does not add the capability to add an effect like poison or burn.

So this sounds weird to me. The troop receiving damage should not be poisoned or catch fire just because of the Poison Dagger or Isshara's Whip.

I guess we'll have to research this more deeply to find out what is going on - I know that I pretty thoroughly checked this part of my mod because I wanted to make sure I got it right, but I'm pretty sure I didn't check it with either of those weapons equipped. I've got both of them (hopefully I didn't sell the dagger, but can go back to a saved game if I did) so I can check what you're seeing.

I know that it is possible to get a unit with high resistance (but less than 80% - if the resistance is 80% or higher then poison or burn effects aren't applied) and then they get very unlucky and get poisoned or burned the damage is reduced significantly and so you'll see very low damage numbers in that case - like when the Phoenix burns an Imp.

I also added the capability, though, if a unit's resistance is greater than 0, then that resistance becomes their chance to resist the effect on successive turns. So if a unit has 50% resistance, for example, and they get a damage effect that matches that resistance, on the next turn they have a 50% chance of resisting that effect altogether and it being removed.

Looks like we need to check this out more and find out exactly what's going on here...:confused:

Wow! You got Edric! Nice! Rion is good, too (Advanced First Aid)! The Cleric / Knight HOMM3 heroes had pretty good skills and Mirabella got most of them!

I hear you! I'm not sure why the Elf HOMM3 Hereos ended up with their skills, but Archery does make sense.

Let's see:

1. Ivor - Ranger, Male Elf: Archery, Offense, Elves
2. Jenova - Ranger, Female Elf: Advanced Archery, Gold +350/day
3. Kyrre - Ranger, Female Elf: Archery, Advanced Logistics
4. Gelu - Ranger, Male Human: Archery, Leadership, Sharpshooters
5. Monere - Planeswalker, Male Magic Elemental: Offense, Logistics, Psychic / Magic Elementals
6. Pasis - Planeswalker, Male Psychic Elemental: Offense, Artillery, Psychic / Magic Elementals

Only 3 of those children have Offense: 1 is an Elf so he goes to Neoka, the other two are Planeswalkers and are Magic and Psychic Elementals. Psychic Elementals were the base unit and then they became Magic Elementals for their upgrade unit in HOMM3.

So it fell out that way for Neoka as all those children made sense since they were either Rangers (Elves) or Magic-using Planeswalkers (the Magic lends itself to Elves).

For Gerda, she just didn't get any babies with HOMM3 Offense. Orcelyn got a lot of the Barbarian Babies because of the Orc tie in - a lot of them have HOMM3 Offense. Orcelyn may have gotten a baby or two from Gerda when I added her. Kilgor might have been Gerda's, but I gave him to Orcelyn because of Behemoths (which was an Orc town unit in HOMM3). Young Yog went to Orcelyn, because in HOMM3 he wanted to be a Barbarian. I guess a case could be made to give him to Gerda, but he wants to be a Barbarian.

Sorry that's about the only kid I can think of moving to Gerda, Young Yog's HOMM3 Skills are: Offense, Ballistics, and Cyclopses. Young Yog is a Male Genie Wizard (who in HOMM3 wanted to become a Barbarian). Normal Yog is a Male Genie and so goes to Diana, but like Young Sandro, Young Gem, and Young Christain, I didn't want to give the younger version of the same hero to the same wife. Young Yog could have been given to any other wife besides Diana, but he seemed a great fit for Orcelyn because of the Barbarian Town / Orc linkage in HOMM3.

So that's why it played out that way...

Sorry, Gerda!:(

Yah - sometimes its best to leave the level 1's and 2's at home since they tend to be a bit fragile. Like when I fought Raab Sotten in my previous game, I faced him only with Demons. I think I had Marius in that game so they go her Demon unit bonus.

I tend to agree with you here - that's what makes playing this game so much fun. I thought briefly about what to do with peasants and figured it probably wasn't worth it, although, a simple fix for them would be to raise the +10 attack limit - that would at least make then less useless!:-)

/C\/C\

OK i checked poisoning effect : 480 dwarfs i killed 120 with royal snakes and poisoned them, next turn only 32 die from poison effect (and by your explanation should be 60). Try that combination, royal snakes special attack have 100% poisoning so it`s easy to check does it work. That situation with 800 bowman and burning might be because i used hell breath on thorn hunters, and it`s not related to ishara whip.

Not necessarily... check this out...
 

Just because 120 were killed doesn't necessarily mean that 60 will be killed due to the effect.

What makes Royal Snakes more complicated is that their normal damage is physical. So a unit's physical resistance comes into play and that is the damage that will go into the features_poison function inside UNIT_FEATURES.LUA.

I'll give a little mini-tutorail about the code in there, but first let's discuss the Royal Snake's attacks. The Royal Snake's normal attack has a 30% chance to poison and its "lunge" attack a 100% chance to poison (check SNAKE_ROYAL.ATOM). However, dwarves have at least 7 resist all (I think it is 8 in impossible due to the +25% increase) and possibly more if they are with a hero. I'm not sure which situation you're dealing with, but you'll need to look at the Dwarve's resistances (or really just poison).

I'm pretty sure the flying damage numbers above the unit's head should be the damage that goes into the features_poison function.

This serves as a mini tutorial, but here's the code:

If you looked at my other tutorial, you'll note that minmax == 0 is a check to make sure that this is the attack being applied (and not some one else's) and then the damage just needs to be greater than 0. The Attack.get_custom_param( "poison" ) actually looks into SNAKE_ROYAL.ATOM under the custom parameters (custom_params) of whichever attack caused the damage. Note that for its baseattack the chance of poison is 30%, while lunge is 100% (these are stock TL as I didn't change the Royal Snake's ATOM).

It's possible that in your case, you're using the Royal Snake's base attack, I don't know, but let's use both examples with the Dwarve's base resistance and follow the code:

So with the base attack, poison = 30
With the "lunge" attack, poison = 100

The second line would apply a modifier to the chance poison if the hero had an item with a bonus here. In this case, though, I don't think I have any items with a specific poison chance bonus (this is to allow people to mod my mod in the future with their own bonuses!) so the values above aren't modified.

Next:

Next you can see that the receiver's poison resistance is queried and then a random number generated. Let's compute poison_chance for both cases assuming that the Dwarve's poison resistance is 8%.

Case 1 (base attack): poison_chance = min between( 100 and 30 * ( 1 - 8 / 100 ) ) = 27.6
Case 2 (lunge attack): poison_chance = min between( 100 and 100 * ( 1 - 8 / 100 ) ) = 92

So those are the two chances to cause poison based on whichever attack the Royal Snake is using if the Dwarve's resistance is 8%.

Next, let's compute poison_damage. I don't know how much damage it said it did, but let's go off of what you stated: 120 Dwarves killed. Base hp: 80, +25% due to Impossible difficulty so health = 80 * 1.25 = 100. So as a guess, let's say the damage is 100 * 120 = 12,000 damage! Wow!

Case 1: poison_damage = 12,000 * 27.6 / 200 = 1656
Cast 2: poison_damage = 12,000 * 92 / 200 = 5520

So the chance to cause the damage goes into how effective the poisoning (in this case) is. Note that the reason why it is 200 is because I'm halving the damage (it could have just as easily been written as X / 100 / 2, but I combined the 2 values). I neglected to mention that the chance applies as well in my previous post, but this is the way it works per the code.

This last part of the code checks to see if the unit was poisoned. For case 1: poison_chance is 27.6% and for case 2: poison_chance is 92%.

If poison is successful, then "effect_poison_attack" is called with: 1) the receiver to apply the damage to, 2) pause (this is for timing of the display, I think), 3) duration of the effect, 4) min damage, and 5) max damage.

Inside the effect_poison_attack function (inside SPELL_EFFECTS.LUA) there is a lot going on, but I essentially store the damage value on the unit (this is a neat feature of the scripting engine that the developers implemented) with the receiver's resistance used to scale up the damage back to what it would be like so:

Case 1: dmg_min = dmg_max = 1656 * ( 1 + 8 / ( 100 - 8 ) ) = 1800
Case 2: dmg_min = dmg_max = 5520 * ( 1 + 8 / ( 100 - 8 ) ) = 6000

This was a little wrinkle I needed to put in because of the way the damage system works. Since the damage system applies the resistance to the damage, I didn't want the damage to be reduced by the resistance twice (once when storing and then again when computing damage) so this restores the "pre-resistance" damage and stores those values (in either case) on the unit.

What happens next, is that when the receiver takes its turn the damage will be applied to the unit and the resistance will be applied - here's the code:

(Note that even though it says burn, this code is inside the new apply_effect_damage common function that I wrote inside SPELL_EFFECTS.LUA and applies damage from both burn and poison effects).

Note that atk_set_damage applies the damage type over the range specified by the mininum and maximum damage. This is an internal King's Bounty library and so when it does this, it computes the resistance of the unit and since I can't gain access to this library that's why I had to scale the damage back up by the unit's resistance because it gets (properly) scaled down by the library function.

This was quite complex and took me a while to figure out because of what "goes on under the hood" of the C/C++ library functions.

So in this case, the damages will be restored to 1656 and 5520 for cases 1 and 2, respectively as applied to the unit. and then you'll note that half 1800 and 6000 (900 and 3000) will be stored on the unit so that the next turn the same thing will happen - resistance is applied, but not twice!

Like I said above, I spent a lot of time working on this and before I did this, the damage would be reduced by the unit's resistance and then by its resistance again before damage was applied (that wasn't the way I wanted it to work!).

There is a lot more going on inside of some of the functions I've mentioned (like how to combine successive hits), but this is how it works per the code.

The funny thing is that I still don't get the same answer you do:

Case 1 apply 1656 damage to Dwarves - number killed: 1656 / 100 = 16.56 (or 16)
Case 2 apply 5520 damage to Dwarves - number killed: 5520 / 100 = 55.2 (or 55)

So in case 1 I get half what you mentioned and in case 2 quite a bit more. So you'll have to see what the Dwarve's actual resistance is and also the damage for your case, but this is how it works exactly per the code.

Anyway, I hope that explains it and this is also a mini-tutorial for how to apply a damage effect and work with the damage library.:grin:

/C\/C\

Finally i finished playthrough in this mod (had a lot work past days), and it was great. ! more time thx for great mod Matt.
I managed impossible/no loss and it was hard in some fights ( Raab Soten, Baal . . . pretty much any hero with intellect above 30 was boring to fight because double/triple cast but it was worth it :-)
Found some weird thing in magic hero fights, when they cast some mass spell mana spent is like for 1 target (expl : Haas cast mass defenseless and spend only 8 mana(instead 40) , or mass magic shackles for 10 (instead 50). If enemy heroes got 2/3 spell casts per turn at least they should pend mana same as player hero. I`m not sure is this bug, or error in code but pls check it out. It`s bad enough to have enemy with 50/60 mana regen per turn, without them casting spells on low prices :-)

And what did you give to Sonya as speciality ( i now remember her, but other enemy heroes also have this) her dryads are 2 lvl unit, but had 12-16 dmg(1-4 basic), so WTF did you put in her inventory for her to have that stats on dryads ? :-D Dark mistycus hero(necromancer in death valley) had necromancers with 250 hp and 20-30 dmg . . . I saw dwarfs with 20-32 dmg (they had bonus fire dmg, but not form hell breath, didnt have buff in their stats screen). Every hero that have some unit speciality that unit have sick stats in battle. It`s not impossible to win this mod, but all i`m saying is that player cant ever get units in his army to that stats so it`s a little frustrating :-)
In the end, i can say warrior with rina/feanora/mirabella/diana/neoka/xeona working without problems.

Also had couple ideas, so what you ppl think about this ?
Priest have 26 hp, and heal 2x10hpm but cant cast it on undead as dmg.Heal spell can be used as dmg for undead, so why not priest healing ability?
I would lower it to 5 heal (when you lead more then 90 priests you dont have unit that can be healed for that much hp 90priest*10heal), and reload 2 so it wouldn`t be used 2 times in row then gift and imba dmg to undead. Thought`s ? ( i got this idea in just finished game i had 1400 priests, and who need 14000 hp healing ? so i thought to make them a bit more useful in fights against undead).
You did nice thing with healer skill and heal/revive abilities , so i though to add something similar to other units that have active abilities. In necromancy add bonus for necromancer animate dead , in archmage add bonus for druid summon (more bears), for evil beholder hypnotise (higher lds), alchemist potions (more dmg), shaman totems (more hp) and such. I`ll check rest of your modding manual, but i hope to do it without big problems.

Super Awesome!
 

Great job! You successfully met my challenge! I'm glad that you were able to do it! Now I'm going to make it tougher!:evil:

But only a little bit, I've been experimenting with dropping unit morale as a function of combat duration as well as their initiative and speed (they are getting tired after all!). I've been limiting morale drop to everyone except Undead and Golems, but am not sure what to do with the Undead, Golems, and Plants with respect to speed and initiative. On the one hand, Undead, Golems, and Plants probably don't really get tired, but I was thinking that maybe since magic is decreasing the control of your Undead troops would start to wane, which would reduce their initiative and then speed. I was thinking of leaving Plants and Golems alone since they are different. Anyway, just struggling with what to do there...

The way it works now is that when the first long battle message occurs is that all units (except Undead and Golems) decrease 1 morale. Then when the second long battle message occurs, all units continue to decrease 1 morale (Undead and Golems are still not included), and all units (except Plants and Golems) drop 1 initiative. Then on the third long battle message, all troops continue to drop 1 morale (except those previously excluded), and then all troops drop 1 initiative and speed (except Plants and Golems). Lastly, for each successive set of stat decrease rounds (every 5 on impossible), morale, initiatve, and speed all continue to drop as they did before. This simulates your troops becoming more and more tired. This only applies to your troops as the enemy troops have no morale penalties (this is internal to the game apparently) and for initiative and speed I figured that since they are the defenders then that's their "homefield" advantage.

Also, I've added charges to all reloadable attacks so that for long combats every troop will eventually run out of using their special abilities since they are getting tired of fighting. The minimum round at which a troop will run out of an attack if they use it as soon as possible through their normal reload time is round 15. So that is plenty of time to use those abilities and you can always use Gift on them (same with AI).

I'm still experimenting with both of these changes... but I think that these won't have much an effect on combat since by round 15 pretty much everyone is dead anyway, except for maybe a few of the enemy hero battles. Also, you can always use Haste and Battle Cry to give your troops a speed or initiative boost as well as Gift to recharge their attacks in the latter rounds...

You have an interesting use for the word boring!;)

I think I know what's going on with the enemy hero mana cast. Their spell level is set by the game internally (based on the enemy hero's level), but I overrode it in the LUA scripts. One of the things I couldn't do was give a mana cost bonus to spells because that is also internal as well. It seems like even though I'm overriding the enemy hero's spell level, it is somehow still referring to the spell level that the internal C/C++ code generates.

I thought I worked around it successfully and actually thought the mana was being subtracted correctly, but it looks like I might still be undershot by the internal workings of that part of the game. I'll look into it some more, but I'm probably stuck there!

This is part of my awesome enemy hero skill system! Just think about all the awesome skills you get as a hero! Well, now turnabout is fair play!

I'll lay it out sometime, because I'm going to use a similar system with AP/CW...

Mysticus is awesome! So is Raab Sotten and Baal like they should be! Like I mentioned previously, a hero with a level higher than yours is going to be pretty tough!

Glad to hear it!:) By the way what were the final levels of your spirits with the Warrior? Did you get any up to level 40 or so?

Can you do me a favor and snap a screenshot (or two) of your hero's stat's and army setup after defeating Haas so I can see what you ended the game with? I'm just curious and it'll help me gauge some things...

You know what's funny? I actually thought I could use Priest's Heal on Undead for damage and just never checked it, I guess!

These are all excellent ideas - I'm pretty sure I have all the bonuses in place and just need to add them to the skill. I'll look into implementing them!

By the way, Erkki found an error in my implementation of the Shaman Dancing Axes skill so I'll have a fix out for that soon...

Have a happy holiday season!:grin:

/C\/C\