New Mod Heroes of Might and Magic 3 Babies!

[jorko80]

Hi Matt!
I finished the game today. As a whole it was a good experience and it was interesting,except those easy spots that I mentioned in my posts before. I will provide some more feedback and ideas,but first I will comment your last post a bit.

Sheep does not work on the Undead, Plants, and Golems (because the unit needs to be at least animal like and living, not dead

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This is a good logic,but makes the undead and especially the plants unstoppable ,because there is no magic that can eliminate them. Blind works at least to undead but the plants sometimes are a pain. Anyway I can't decide yet if there should be a spell that affects these creatures.

So the spells are "automatically balanced" so long as the initial Mana cost is accurate. Currently, this is a bit more subjective, but a simple ordering of Level 1 spells by their power can help with the initial Mana / Crystal cost and this is what I've done.

You've said it yourself - the initial mana cost must be accurate. So that's the problem with the sheep-spell . Maybe it should cost more,because the effect it makes is supreme. And ofcourse that is directly connected with the accumulated mana and the mana-regeneration rate,which are both highly increased in your mode. Otherwise your formula seems to be very good and you have experience from modding other games(Emperor of fading sun - which I never played by the way, is it good ?). I understand your system and it looks perfect but the initial costs and the effect of the spell are things that are valued subjectively and considering that I appear to have more experience playing KB ,my final feeling is that the spell should cost 22,38,55 ,but with reduced duration. Ofcourse that's just my opinion

I did make changes to the Plants (they are now a lot better) and other units here and there that felt like they had certain under-powered abilities or there were notable gaps (like not being able to Resurrect Plants / Undead / Level 5 units). I also decided to drop the Ancient Vampire's Critical Hit avoidance to only 50% since if the enemy's Critical Hit is too high you could use invulnerable Ancient Vampires against them because of Death's Deception constantly avoiding damage.

These are good changes, I like them. I like a lot what you've done with the Ents,finally they are usable and competitive. But that makes me think ,that there are so many creatures that are too weak compared to others and they could be tweaked also. In my game ,at some point I decided to take some knights in my army,they are available in the late game, they have good armor and bonus dmg vs dragons. But they sucked completely ,they were incapable of killing a single dragon and also died pretty quick,despite their fire resistance, completely useless unit. And even worse is,that there is a special ability in the skill tree for them,which doesn't worth taking.

Yah, you're probably right, although I am toying with an "experience system" except for the enemy units. It would really be more of a difficulty location system where this modifier possibly becomes more prominent. I'm kind of already doing this with the difficulty level + map location modifier so I don't know if I simply change the map location divisor if that would be the same thing, but it is just food for thought...

Adding experience system would be great. That goes to the wifes,children,troops and enemy troops also. WOG comes to my mind. It was super interesting and challenging. The troops gained not just stats improvement,but also new abilities with levels.

Now for the last part of my game. Clearing the elven lands,death lands and demonis was not so hard, I guess 20% harder would've been better. The hero fights were good and interesting. Karador was amazing and Baal also. Xeona was a nice surprise with these ultra powerful demon gates. Then comes the labyrinth and the seven Haas dragons ,they were good, then Bagud was super. Haas was a good fight,which I successfully did in the first try. Karador and Bagud I reloaded twice, they were really good.

But as always I did kinda lost interest after entering the grey wasteland. After that there is not much to develop in your hero and also there are no new units to discover and so it is not so rewarding to play. It's just the story left,but once you know it ,the game loses replayability in the late part. And that happens even earlier in AP/CW . And I just kill some heroes and go straight to the final,leaving a lot of enemy armies untouched. Also the skill that provides additional experience is a bit useless,it stays always to lvl1. I was lvl28 when I fought Haas and it was enough to defeat him. So my idea is that there should be some more units coming when you kill Karador,then Baal and in the Haas' Labyrinth also. It will be definately rewarding and encouraging. The units that come to my mind will blend super in your mod,ofcourse I don't have the slightest idea,how hard it is to make them. So destroying the crystal of darkness should allow you to buy crystal dragons,destroying Baal leads to Rust dragons-born in the sulfur of demonis, and Faerie and Azure dragons should be available in the magical Haas' Labyrinth. And in the late game there should be some special skills available for example when you are a veteran 28 level hero,so the player will be stimulated to fight until the very end of the game. Maybe adding something in the skill trees will help and extending the level cap to lvl35. Ofcourse these things lead to the increase of the power of the armies and heroes in the Labyrinth and Murock, but I suppose that's easily done. I hope you'll like the idea. And AP/CW needs something like that even earlier.
Some more thoughts :
- The art Eye of the storm is currently useless with just -1 speed,compared to the speed bonuses you provided to the creatures,it should have at least -3 or -4 to be competitive.

- the enemy heroes throughout the game use the spell geyser too much. I was even bored, I enter a hero vs hero fight and nothing new - geyser,geyser,geyser . There are other powerful spells please.

- Sacrifice. I mentioned earlier,that it is unusable in the begining of the game. So my opinion stays the same about that. But the new part is,that it is way overpowered in late game with mage. I was able to ressurect 250% army . Example : Killing Baal was hard and it costed me a lot of units. Then I only needed one ordinary fight in which I restored my army completely ,not spending a single coin. Maybe a cap of 120% will be enough.
- Book of evil lvl3 casts something like sleep on the enemy,but when I attack the creature it is dispelled. So I think the effect should be the same as when the Beholders put someone to sleep. Otherwise it is completely equivalent with blind ,just the name is different. Ofcourse it should have shorter duration then blind.
- Rage draining is also too powerful ,it must have bigger rest.
- Chargers. I finished the game now and continue to have the same opinion. I was able to replenish my mana and rage after every battle,no matter how hard it was. They should give at least twice fewer points. Lina was lvl25 when I was in Murock , lvl24 entering the Labyrinth and it was more then enough for a mage hero. Your doubts that she will be weak were false. The time spirit was lvl35 and the other 2 were 20. That's a lot compared to the original game with a mage hero.

Some bugs :
- Evil book makes sheeps out of undead
- The phoenix looses a big part of it's attack when it's shot by a dispel arrow from the skeleton archer.
- Dragon Arrows ignore just resistance,not the defense as it says . It is very weak and unusable.
- In the fight versus Karador, the crystal of darknes raised my death stacks to his side and most of them were fine,except that it raised bone dragons from my black unicorns. That was awful ,because they were the same number as my unicorns were- 106 , and that was impossible army to kill. So I reloaded tried again,couldn't step on time on the unicorn body and it happened again. In the end I had to change the unicorns with different army. I think Bone dragons should be raised only from dragons. I don't know if that's a bug in your mod or in the game itself,but that's the first time I see it.
That is all for now.When anything else comes to my mind I'll write again. I will rest from KB for a while trying if Shades of Darkness is any good and then maybe I'll try your mod with a warrior or paladin.
Thank you one more time for your great work