New Mod Heroes of Might and Magic 3 Babies!

[MattCaspermeyer]

Originally Posted by Zepdog

Matt, I have 2 things to ask/tell.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks for the comments and keep playing and commenting!

/C\/C\

[MattCaspermeyer]

Originally Posted by Fatt_Shade

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

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

2) By you`re description i think you got Thant as 3rd kid with Rina. I had same problem with Mephala daughter from Neoka, and it was simple typing error in her file. Go to you`re game folder, king`s bounty the legend\data\mods\mod_homm3_babies\ open that archive with winrar/winzip and find rina_babies file. Open that file with notepad , and find kid_thant, he miss 1 string for his spell bonus

 kid_thant {
  category=o
  image=heroitem_tome_thant.png
  hint_config=object_item
  label=itm_kid_thant_name
  hint=itm_kid_thant_hint
  information_label=itm_kid_thant_info
  maphint=
  mapinfo=
  price=6
  maxcount=0
  level=3
  race=human
  use {}
  weight=10
  fight {
  }
  mods {
    sp_gain_power_necromancy=count,12
    sp_mana_battle=count,4
  }
  propbits=child,rare
  params {}
  actions {
    tick=
    onuse=
    bfight=
    @=020000000000008000000000
  }
}

Copy bolded text string like i showed here, and place it in you`re file, save and exit, close winrar archive, and try again. I think it shouldnt be problems anymore.
If he still freeze game, say, Matt should find solution. Good luck

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

Or have Fatt_Shade keep checking and finding my errors!

Hate it when I miss bonuses!

/C\/C\

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

[MattCaspermeyer]

Originally Posted by Zepdog

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

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

Plus it is fun to see all the variants!

Originally Posted by Zepdog

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

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

Originally Posted by Zepdog

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

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

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

Here are some recent thoughts...

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

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

/C\/C\

[Zepdog]

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

[MattCaspermeyer]

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

The following babies are affected:

• Rina
  • Galthran
• Orcelyn
  • Alkin
  • Drakon

All other "Armorer" babies are okay.

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

/C\/C\

[Fatt_Shade]

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

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

[MattCaspermeyer]

Originally Posted by Fatt_Shade

You`re welcome
I`m not even sure would my idea solved problem with freezing on Thant, as i said before had similar prob, with Mephala armorer but with Thant was different thing so . . .

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

Originally Posted by Fatt_Shade

And you`re comment about leading full plant stack is nice for mage, but with warrior i did opposite thing ( 1 archmage, 1 marauder, inqusitors full lds, and 2 fighting units royal snakes and griffins in my last game, and master of spirits skill on 3 lvl asap. This way i get more exp for rage spirits then if i lead full army. Archmage for support only 1 is enough, marauder 1 also for digging corpses for gold, inqusitors rage generators and ress, and snakes/griffins to control enemy. As i said before i finished with sick spirits 40+ lvl`s Zerock/Reaper 46th, Sleem 40, Lina only 36 But i stop my empty army strategy after finished dwarf lands, because elf/demon/undead lands were much harder than game until then, thank you very much enemy heroes with 30+ intellect
But i think it`s possible to get spirits up to 48 lvl, except Lina she have only supporting skills with low exp gain.

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

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

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

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

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

Originally Posted by Fatt_Shade

As for ideas :
1) entangle 1 charge on royals, nice i like it. In red sands mod they added new plant monstera check it out it`s interesting unit.

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

Originally Posted by Fatt_Shade

2) giving inventory for shop to blue dragon in Arlania, good idea but how to make it work ? And if you manage it , did you thought about giving recharge items option to dwarf prince, or giving him blood potion for +150 lds option with prices like buying rune/crystal each time is higher price. And for safire dragon unit check http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=22725 , bladeking there made 2 new units champion for humans, and azure dragon nor neutrals. It`s nice tanky unit, you can edit it for icy breath but i like it in general in my oppinion azure was better then ice dragon from red sands but that is just me.

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

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

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

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

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

Originally Posted by Fatt_Shade

3) Mana drain for enemy emerald dragons, GREAT i like it (but make it so it works against enemy heroes also. they have much higher mana regen then you, at least make it even battle if you use emerald dragons to mana burn him )

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

Originally Posted by Fatt_Shade

4) rage generation for frenzy nice idea, mana have 2 skills meditation and transmutate, so for rage we have rage skill (duh , so why not 1 more. You`ll have to make it stop working after 20 battle turns, to work with mana/rage restriction due to unit fatigue like in tL.

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

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

Originally Posted by Fatt_Shade

Question about that :
1) is it possible to give every 10 hero lvl`s 1 more battle turn mana/rage inflow. You made it in homm3 mod in normal battle inflow stop at 15 turn, and vs enemy heroes/towers it`s +5 = 20 turn mana/rage stop. So how about as you progress on higher lvl`s you get more experienced in managing army and giving them longer time before they get tired.

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

Originally Posted by Fatt_Shade

2) did you think about my idea to switch paladin/warrior leadership gain ? Paladin mind skill glory indicate that class should have higher lds, and biggest army. While warrior have strongest units attack / crit% /initiative with onslaught quick draw . . . and strongest rage skills. As it is now, paladin is weakest class so i thought to buff it up a bit. Mage is mana/spell oriented and lowest lds is OK. Any ideas ?

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

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

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

/C\/C\

[Fatt_Shade]

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

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

[MattCaspermeyer]

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

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

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

/C\/C\

Originally Posted by MattCaspermeyer

Here are some recent thoughts...

• Royal Thorn - Give them a charge to Entangle any unit (this would work just like the Ent / Ancient Ent Entangle except that it is cast on a unit instead a side effect of an attack).
• Entangle - Change it so that it doesn't work on plants.

/C\/C\

[Fatt_Shade]

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

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