New Mod Heroes of Might and Magic 3 Babies!

[Kiras]

I'm not sure if this is the right thread, or the other one is. Anyways, I'm playing a mage. Near the end of Haas's Labrynth, and I have 45 int. I think a couple spells may be a bit unbalanced at this point.

Armageddon - does 0% damage to friendlies. They take 1 damage, and 1 burn damage/turn.

Stone skin - +80% phys resist for -1 init. Add in Tolerance + Slippery Cuirass or Twinkling boots, and everyone has 95% phys resist. Physical attacks might be a bit underpowered given this.

Battle Cry - +5 morale, mass. Thing is, between diplomacy and wife bonuses, it's easy to hit the morale cap anyways. So it doesn't seem very useful.

[MattCaspermeyer]

Originally Posted by Kiras

I'm not sure if this is the right thread, or the other one is.

I prefer this one (although I pretty much respond to either)...

Originally Posted by Kiras

Anyways, I'm playing a mage. Near the end of Haas's Labrynth, and I have 45 int. I think a couple spells may be a bit unbalanced at this point.

That's some really high intelligence. Let me list your bonuses:

sp_hero = 1.30 (assume that you're level 30)
sp_destroyer = 1.50 (assume you've got level 3 Destroyer skill)
int_power = 1.45 (you have 45 intellect)
int_pwr = 1.60 (45/7 floored is 6 so +60% total)
Your multiplier is a minimum of 1.30 * 1.50 * 1.45 * 1.60 = 4.52.

Wow! That is pretty high...

Originally Posted by Kiras

Armageddon - does 0% damage to friendlies. They take 1 damage, and 1 burn damage/turn.

At level 3 Armageddon, base PRC (friendly) damage is 100 - 20 = 80%; however you've got a modifier so friendly damage is 100 - 20 * 4.52 = 100 - 90.48 = 9.5% friendly damage. So you must have some more modifiers, maybe an attack bonus or a child bonus.

You are doing at least 100 - 300 damage times the 4.52 modifier and the +125% increase per spell level, which is 1 + ( spell_level - 1 ) * 125 / 100 = 3.5. So your damage range is 100 * 4.52 * 3.5 = 1585 to 300 * 4.52 * 3.5 = 4750. At the minimum, 9.5% of that is 150-450 damage. This is kind of what I was targeting for a really high level and powerful mage, but your bonus is 100 or over so that you get 100 - 100 = 0 on the friendly damage.

I just looked into SPELLS_POWER.LUA and I see that I have a limit for it, but I set it wrong - I'm limiting the value between 0 and 95, but since it works backwards, I should be limiting it between 5 and 100 (so that it does between 5-100% of normal damage). So thanks for pointing this out!

As an aside, the thought here was to limit Armageddon's friendly damage to 5% of total damage and so I'm not sure how much your damage actually is (but it is probably higher than I listed) so I was thinking a few hundred points of damage would encourage you to use it because there is no resistance to it. I'll fix this in my latest build - in fact I just did!

Originally Posted by Kiras

Stone skin - +80% phys resist for -1 init. Add in Tolerance + Slippery Cuirass or Twinkling boots, and everyone has 95% phys resist. Physical attacks might be a bit underpowered given this.

For level 2 or 3 (3 is mass so bonus is the same) spell power is 20. Your bonuses are probably:

sp_hero = 1.30
sp_healer = 1.30 (assume you've got level 3 Healer skill)
int_power = 1.45
int_pwr = 1.60
Your multiplier is a minimum of 1.30 * 1.30 * 1.45 * 1.60 = 3.92.

So Stone Skin power = 20 * 3.92 = 78 (so once again you may have another bonus somewhere). Once again that is pretty high and to your point, another item or two and you've got 95% physical resistance.

There are other factors, too, like other resistances that you get from skills and your Hero's Defense. If you've got your Tolerance skill up to level 3 you get another +6% resist all and then you get +2% resist all for every 7 Defense. So maybe you have another +10% resist all total.

This one is tricky to get its power right compared to Divine Armor. Incidentally, you'd probably have +60% resist all at Level 3 Divine Armor (since it is 15 * 3.92 = 59). The trick here is that Stone Skin has to be better than Divine Armor otherwise you wouldn't use it. Some of this goes back to when Stone Skin was not mass at level 3, so perhaps if I set the bonus to be 15 (just like Divine Armor is at level 3) the mass cast may be enough of a difference to get you to use it.

There are plenty of enemies, though, that do damage other than Physical towards the end of the game, so maybe it is okay. For hero battles, I'm not too worried about having it be that high because their damage scales very well.

So I'll think about changing Stone Skin's power progression from 10, 20, 20 to 10, 15, 15. This change will cause a decrease in the mana / crystals as well as its cost since I have all this linked via formula.

Originally Posted by Kiras

Battle Cry - +5 morale, mass. Thing is, between diplomacy and wife bonuses, it's easy to hit the morale cap anyways. So it doesn't seem very useful.

Well you only get +1 with Diplomacy and your wife bonuses only apply if you use her troops. It also can dramatically offset morale penalties if you decide to use intolerant troops together and haven't leveled up your Tolerance skill, yet. So it is still useful somewhat, in these types of situations. And although it might not make much of a difference, your morale gets pretty lousy if you play into the drudgery stages of combat so this can help boost morale then if you need it (although at this stage a player is probably just milking the turns to recover dead units). Lastly, It does provide a use during the early game, though, when you typically have no morale bonuses and since you can get the spell early, that's when it's use is encouraged.

Well thanks for the comments - feel free to post any other inconsistencies you feel are present since they just might be a bug like the limits I had on Armageddon!

By the way, I haven't played a Mage for a while, can you tell me what you're Spirit levels are? I'd like to get a feel for how high you can get them now with a Mage since I'm playing a Paladin. Thanks!

/C\/C\

[Kiras]

Beat the game. Ended at level 30 with 47 int.
Items that helped int: Old skull, dead skull, ancient amulet. Also consumed one of those +3 int rings whose name I forget.
Neoka - no bonus. Aeris is the only kid of hers I have with spell bonuses
Aeris, int sp +20%.
Scouting 3
Inquisition
Healer 3
Archmage 3
Destroyer 3
High magic 3

I think I took leadership only once on level up. Always went for int or sp bonuses when offered. Incidentally, my phantoms are 95% (didn't use that spell much though), Pygmy is -73%, Plague is -73%. Those are how I take down really strong stacks.

Armageddon is doing 1925-5780 damage. Incidentally, the 1 damage and 1 burn damage it does to me is actually helpful. Mana spring is giving me 43 mana at 8 duration, so casting that on someone and mana for armageddons is no longer an issue.

I never got a copy of divine armor in this run. Using a cheat code to get it in the book, it gives +72% resist all. Compare to stone skin's +80% phys, but divine armor isn't mass. Which leads to a really overpowered strategy that I never used: A single level 5 stack with mana spring and divine armor casted on round 1. After that, they'd take almost no damage, and I could spam armageddon.

I didn't go for a true spell power build. I wonder how broken this would be with that water nymph for a wife instead of Neoka.

Spirits are all ~level 20. Except the reaper, who is low 30s. I basically chose one ability on each to specialize on. Smashing sword (was actually aiming at underground blades, but the random number generator god did not like me), Poison cloud, Ice orb, and the Reaper was a mix of all abilities.

Late game, most fights went like this: My army was elves, hunters, druids, ancient ents, and dryads.
Round 1: Target on the ancient ents, plus magic shackles (if useful), mass slow, a mass slayer, ancient pheonix, occasionally mass helplessness. Sometimes kamikaze if I'm trying to kill a big black dragon stack.
Round 2: Magic spring on ancient ents, then start chucking armageddons.
Round 3 and beyond: More armageddons. Resurrection as needed.

Geyser was useful when I first got it, but I ditched it once I found armageddon was at 0% damage to friendlies. Plus, the physical resists made it useless against heroes. Well, I occasionally used it for the stun. The change to armageddon should help make other damage spells useful again.

A couple balance issues aside, it's fun to laugh at impossible armies as I squish them like bugs. Early game was way harder, but that's always felt true with King's Bounty. A number of dangerous heroes like Sonya, I had to retry the fights a couple times to have low casualties. With the dryad sleep thing, I literally prevented her from ever getting a spell cast.

[Fatt_Shade]

@Kiras Nice run man. Only question : what kids you had at end ? Maybe some screen of end game hero screen

About this spell bonuses now isnt big problem, but it will be if this mod get functional for Ap/Cw where intellect can get to 80+. Some change should be done, but not linear if possible.
Suggestion : to make intellect bonus for some spells go in some formula until 30-40 int, above that lower bonus, above 70 still some bonus but again lower.Same as with plague spell there is cap for penalty to unit stats.Why not make stone skin/divine armor and rest?

[Kiras]

Originally Posted by Fatt_Shade

@Kiras Nice run man. Only question : what kids you had at end ? Maybe some screen of end game hero screen

About this spell bonuses now isnt big problem, but it will be if this mod get functional for Ap/Cw where intellect can get to 80+. Some change should be done, but not linear if possible.
Suggestion : to make intellect bonus for some spells go in some formula until 30-40 int, above that lower bonus, above 70 still some bonus but again lower.Same as with plague spell there is cap for penalty to unit stats.Why not make stone skin/divine armor and rest?

I've played through this before honestly, but I was cheating this round on controlling which kids Gelu, Ryland, Aeris, and Ivor. That basically gives me tons of elves and hunters. Ironically, it didn't end up being nearly as powerful as I thought it would be, because phys attacks weren't that good. Even though the hunters and elves almost always critted. With mass slow, pretty much any ranged heavy army could mow down the enemies before they reach you, especially if you start chucking pygmy or plague at the tough stacks. Plus, Phoenix are fantastic expendable tanks. The only scary enemies later on, besides heroes casting armageddon on me, were black and red dragons. They became a lot less scary when I noticed that my armageddon was doing no damage to me. My army didn't matter much at that point. I'm tempted to play again with a demon army, which would make the fire damage negligible. I miss my demonologists though, Crossworlds really has a better variety of units.

[MattCaspermeyer]

Originally Posted by Kiras

Beat the game. Ended at level 30 with 47 int.
Items that helped int: Old skull, dead skull, ancient amulet. Also consumed one of those +3 int rings whose name I forget.
Neoka - no bonus. Aeris is the only kid of hers I have with spell bonuses
Aeris, int sp +20%.
Scouting 3
Inquisition
Healer 3
Archmage 3
Destroyer 3
High magic 3

Ahh! That's where your additional bonus came from - another 1.2 times the amplifiers I mentioned above.

Originally Posted by Kiras

I think I took leadership only once on level up. Always went for int or sp bonuses when offered. Incidentally, my phantoms are 95% (didn't use that spell much though), Pygmy is -73%, Plague is -73%. Those are how I take down really strong stacks.

Armageddon is doing 1925-5780 damage. Incidentally, the 1 damage and 1 burn damage it does to me is actually helpful. Mana spring is giving me 43 mana at 8 duration, so casting that on someone and mana for armageddons is no longer an issue.

5% of 1925 - 5780 is 185 to 550 damage so that gives you a feel for what kind of damage you'd take if you maxed out the 5% friendly damage on Armageddon with the forthcoming update.

Pygmy and Plague are both amazingly effective at taking out stacks as they effectively reduce the stack by the percent of their power.

Going for the intelligence and spell bonuses sounds like a good strategy!

Originally Posted by Kiras

I never got a copy of divine armor in this run. Using a cheat code to get it in the book, it gives +72% resist all. Compare to stone skin's +80% phys, but divine armor isn't mass. Which leads to a really overpowered strategy that I never used: A single level 5 stack with mana spring and divine armor casted on round 1. After that, they'd take almost no damage, and I could spam armageddon.

That certainly would be a potent Divine Armor spell, although some enemy heroes have -50% of a resistance type so you'd be exposed to at least one resistance type depending on who you fought (for example, Sonya is -50% Magic Resistance or Xeona is -50% Fire Resistance). By the way, in my latest update I'm working on, Unicorns have a +20% Magic Resistance Aura and Black Unicorns have a -30% Magic Resistance Aura (or Curse). So this will make their use more interesting as they add / subtract Magic Resistance to your troops / enemies (or vice versa).

Also, a lot of the later enemy heroes have the Dispel spell and so you might find it getting Dispelled.

Originally Posted by Kiras

I didn't go for a true spell power build. I wonder how broken this would be with that water nymph for a wife instead of Neoka.

Diana certainly has some powerful magic babies. It'd be interesting to hear if someone stuck with her to see how they'd fare.

Originally Posted by Kiras

Spirits are all ~level 20. Except the reaper, who is low 30s. I basically chose one ability on each to specialize on. Smashing sword (was actually aiming at underground blades, but the random number generator god did not like me), Poison cloud, Ice orb, and the Reaper was a mix of all abilities.

For a Mage, it is hard to get the Spirit abilities leveled up, but 20 is pretty good.

I'm currently level 28 in my Paladin game and all the Spirits are at Level 35 or 36. I've been really diligent with keeping them balanced as I leveled them up. I really like how each Spirit now has at least 2 damage abilities that can give you a lot of experience when used, whereas before it was hard to level up Lina and Sleem. I still have the Labyrinth and beyond to do, so maybe I'll get them all up to level 40 - we'll see how it goes...

Originally Posted by Kiras

Late game, most fights went like this: My army was elves, hunters, druids, ancient ents, and dryads.
Round 1: Target on the ancient ents, plus magic shackles (if useful), mass slow, a mass slayer, ancient pheonix, occasionally mass helplessness. Sometimes kamikaze if I'm trying to kill a big black dragon stack.
Round 2: Magic spring on ancient ents, then start chucking armageddons.
Round 3 and beyond: More armageddons. Resurrection as needed.

Sounds like a really good strategy with the 1 damage that Armageddon was doing! Once I release the current version then you'll have to deal with more damage from this spell, but this strategy should still be fairly viable.

Originally Posted by Kiras

Geyser was useful when I first got it, but I ditched it once I found armageddon was at 0% damage to friendlies. Plus, the physical resists made it useless against heroes. Well, I occasionally used it for the stun. The change to armageddon should help make other damage spells useful again.

The enemy hero bonuses make fighting them really interesting. I think I've made it harder with the changes that I've made to the spell AI - time will tell after I finish debugging it and am ready to release it.

Originally Posted by Kiras

A couple balance issues aside, it's fun to laugh at impossible armies as I squish them like bugs. Early game was way harder, but that's always felt true with King's Bounty. A number of dangerous heroes like Sonya, I had to retry the fights a couple times to have low casualties. With the dryad sleep thing, I literally prevented her from ever getting a spell cast.

Sonya is tough with her -50% Magic Resistance and Lightning! I'm glad you had fun!

I'll probably end up changing the Dryad sleep to a charged ability, although there are mind immune units that aren't affected by it and it doesn't effect Level 4's and above.

Originally Posted by Fatt_Shade

@Kiras Nice run man. Only question : what kids you had at end ? Maybe some screen of end game hero screen

About this spell bonuses now isnt big problem, but it will be if this mod get functional for Ap/Cw where intellect can get to 80+. Some change should be done, but not linear if possible.
Suggestion : to make intellect bonus for some spells go in some formula until 30-40 int, above that lower bonus, above 70 still some bonus but again lower.Same as with plague spell there is cap for penalty to unit stats.Why not make stone skin/divine armor and rest?

Yep - I'll certainly have to change how I do bonuses in AP / CW...

Originally Posted by Kiras

I've played through this before honestly, but I was cheating this round on controlling which kids Gelu, Ryland, Aeris, and Ivor. That basically gives me tons of elves and hunters. Ironically, it didn't end up being nearly as powerful as I thought it would be, because phys attacks weren't that good. Even though the hunters and elves almost always critted. With mass slow, pretty much any ranged heavy army could mow down the enemies before they reach you, especially if you start chucking pygmy or plague at the tough stacks.

Did you try Dragon Arrows at all with your Elves? That spell gives them Astral Damage to their Dragon Arrow attacks. I'm going to change the damage on this attack for each unit it affects (Archers, Bowman, Elves, and Elf Hunters) such that it is double the damage of their normal attack since the damage increase is not consistent with each unit (for example, the Archers get a big percent bonus compared to Bowman and the Elves).

Originally Posted by Kiras

Plus, Phoenix are fantastic expendable tanks. The only scary enemies later on, besides heroes casting armageddon on me, were black and red dragons. They became a lot less scary when I noticed that my armageddon was doing no damage to me. My army didn't matter much at that point. I'm tempted to play again with a demon army, which would make the fire damage negligible. I miss my demonologists though, Crossworlds really has a better variety of units.

The Phoenix is very potent and the Dragon's fire goes against your weakness to Fire Resistance from using the Elves. Did you fight Xeona or how were your battles with Raab Sottan or Baal? Were you using Elves or some other troop combo?

Since when I play I marry each wife, have 4 kids, divorce her, and go to the next so that I can double check their kids, etc. I usually end up fighting Xeona with Neoka and her kids when I'm level 20 or so. That battle is usually extremely tough because she burns my Elven troops a lot. So that's where you need to get some Fire Resistance to help. My current game, I fought her at Level 23 and she was a bear with Elven troops! I then marry Xeona after defeating her and finish the game with her and her kids. I got a crazy kid combination with her this time around where each child has +20% intelligence spell power (I got Ash, Axsis, Inteus, and Deemer) for a whopping 1.8 modifier from just her kids! I've got 33 intellect and Stone Skin is maxed at 80% Physical Resistance!

I've still been playing Demon troops, but since I don't have any specific Demon troop bonuses (just Xeona's general Demon troop bonuses) I'm (when I get a chance to play next, after all these changes I'm adding here and there) going to get some Red and Black Dragons and swap out the Imps or Cerberi. Plus the Evil Book gave me trouble so I'm probably going to do the single Black Dragon stack thang because my Demon troops keep getting zapped by Lightning!

Anyway, thanks for the comments - it's fun to hear various strategies and how you've progressed in the game!

/C\/C\

[Kiras]

I tried Dragon Arrows only a few times. It actually made my elves do less damage than their normal attack. I think. It's been a few days and my memory of it is kind of fuzzy. Think I used it to try to kill a level 5 that I was barely denting. Hell breath was a better enhancement spell by far.

Xeona was the toughest fight in the game. I don't play no-loss anymore, so I didn't have to redo it over and over, but she still chewed up a big chunk of my army. Elves, hunters, dryads, ancient ents, and druids. She was actually worse than Baal.
One of the Haas' incarnations triple casted armageddon on his first turn. That was fairly nasty too. I ended up reloading and just tried to prevent him from casting.

[Sirlancelot]

Originally Posted by Kiras

A couple balance issues aside, it's fun to laugh at impossible armies as I squish them like bugs.

A couple balance issues aside squishing impossible armies like bugs??? I get you're being ironic, right? Now I feel rather discouraged. Great feedback, though.

To be honest, I wanted challenge level to be somehow simmilar to that of Ufo classic ironman, where no matter how good you play, you can lose. And sometimes, unexpectedly.

Good strategy and tactics should almost always a requisite to win, yet not a warranty. Otherwise it's just a complex and time consuming labour to accomplish before victory comes.

[Kiras]

Originally Posted by Sirlancelot

A couple balance issues aside squishing impossible armies like bugs??? I get you're being ironic, right? Now I feel rather discouraged. Great feedback, though.

To be honest, I wanted challenge level to be somehow simmilar to that of Ufo classic ironman, where no matter how good you play, you can lose. And sometimes, unexpectedly.

Good strategy and tactics should almost always a requisite to win, yet not a warranty. Otherwise it's just a complex and time consuming labour to accomplish before victory comes.

Maybe I should have drawn a stronger distinction between hero armies and normal armies. Mages have always had the lowest leadership, so they run into more "impossible" foes, but they have the tools for dealing with them. It's not that hard to squish impossible armies with good spells. Heroes are a totally different matter, they're dangerous to the point that it's worth using dryads to sleep a chunk of their units, just so you can prevent them from casting on you. The armageddon fix will also help greatly at making armies more dangerous, as will things like nerfing mass stoneskin.