Fixing Starting Daert / Bagyr

[wyatan]

I'll have to try it out, should provide a nice challenge.

Now, a few observations.

Bagyr

- While it's nice to give the Orc Scout a whirl, there's a whole quest line dedicated (and a late one to boot) to designing and enabling that unit.
If it's available from the start, the game stops making sense in that regard.
Not that it really matters, but well, just sayin'.
- Also regarding the "quest integrity" aspect, the troll shop should still sell trolls. Sure you can't buy them at the start, but when later on you're told that a family of trolls lives there, it rings a bell. While if there were no trolls for sale, the player might go "uh ?" instead.
Minor nitpick, I know.
- I would swap the spell distribution: Stoneskin and Berserker in the spell book, Trap and Nature Call at the shop.
The reason is that Stoneskin and Berserker are both "mainstream" for the warrior class (support spells) and in-character for an orc, while Trap and Nature Call present alternate strategical approaches. So those should be an option at the player's discretion, not an "imposed choice".
- There are two medals that require casting a few spells a lot of time, I believe one spell from each selection should be made available to the player from the start (either by picking spells from both lists, or by editing the medal spell lists to include the new spell selection).

Daert

- Same observation concerning the female vampires as for Bagyr's orc scout.
(Although that quest line is pretty silly in the game, since female vampires clearly already exist).
- On my first playthrough, I got the feeling the game was trolling me: you get Poison Skull as a damage spell... while most of the initial opponents are poison resistant!
Furthermore, Poison Skull is not really in-character for a vampire.
So I'd ditch it.
Frost Grasp would be more "vampirish", and I believe it's a spell that gets little love anyway (well, by me at least, lol). So I'd make that the spellbook spell instead of just a scroll.
- Kamikaze is an interesting tactical spell (and also one that's not getting much use I believe), and it's been proven to be enough to beat the shelter fights (although that's tough), but again, not very "vampirish". Call of Death would be more thematic (although its tactical usefulness here, especially for no loss, is doubtful).
- Same observation as for Dagyr concerning the medals.

[ckdamascus]

Gave it a whirl since my "give myself some fairly ridiculous troops" option failed to result in a no loss. Couldn't quite do it since the elves still do some pretty ridiculous damage. Not sure if you tested it yourself and found some strange way to beat it. If so, I hope it isn't one of those really narrow set of options to do it.

Maybe we should try to figure out why demoness or vampire works. They actually have nuke spells or a useful tree (for the sake of the early battles). Demoness has diversions which gives her traps AND a very strong summoner unit early on. She also has a nuke so this gives her a very good chance. Vampire has nukes and a special unit that can restore all HP and it is fast enough to kite a fair set of units. Also with the right spell and proper usage of his magic skill tree, he can really turn the tide.

Orc has, at best, in the might tree has onslaught for initiative which is only useful if you could actually do meaningful damage early game. You simply don't have enough leadership to hit that minimum threshold of useful damage. Nevermind that if you go straight for onslaught, you will miss out on the more useful rage tree abilities later.

Orc magic is pretty bad since he has the lowest starting mana and no way to even have it recover mid battle. Even if you got the trap trophy after wasting tons of time, it will hardly be of much use. 2 traps per battle then the snore fest of waiting a few minutes to let your rage disappear and mana go back up.

Orc needs a LOT more units or better spells to have a good chance to start with some variety. I went in with a demon, dark paladin, orc veterans, and shaman and still failed. I'll admit though the starting orc units was a great surprise with tons of variety and potential but without a solid tank or two, it simply doesn't hold up.

Anyway, what's all this talk about using "out of control" units? Will it still count as losses? (guessing it will) also if they are the last units remaining, does combat end?

[MattCaspermeyer]

Originally Posted by wyatan

I'll have to try it out, should provide a nice challenge.

Sounds good - hope you enjoy it!

Originally Posted by wyatan

Now, a few observations.

Bagyr

- While it's nice to give the Orc Scout a whirl, there's a whole quest line dedicated (and a late one to boot) to designing and enabling that unit.
If it's available from the start, the game stops making sense in that regard.
Not that it really matters, but well, just sayin'.

I tried it without them, but simply put, Bagyr needs a unit that can summon troops. The only Orc troop that can do that is the Orc Scout. I realized that you do get them later in the game as part of a special quest, but I figured giving you one or possibly two at the very beginning wouldn't hurt, although I haven't seen the text to the quest line to see if it seems very inconsistent.

Nonetheless, if you read through all my posts in this topic, you'll note that I tried it with all the other Orc Level 4 and below troops, but that wasn't enough. The only other route to go would be to give him a non-Orc summoner. Seems very unfitting to me so that's why I ended up adding the Orc Scout.

The Troll Shop does present an option to provide him with some non-Orc troops, but I wanted him to be able to do it with Orcs only since Neoline and Daert can do it with their race's troops.

Too bad Orc Hunters aren't in the game any more as they would have been a good choice instead of the Orc Scouts and not changed the flavor of the later quest.

As an aside, why aren't the new Crossworlds Orc troops in Dark Side?

Originally Posted by wyatan

- Also regarding the "quest integrity" aspect, the troll shop should still sell trolls. Sure you can't buy them at the start, but when later on you're told that a family of trolls lives there, it rings a bell. While if there were no trolls for sale, the player might go "uh ?" instead.
Minor nitpick, I know.

No worries - this part hasn't been changed (he still sells 1 Troll at the very beginning and note that I only affected the starting Tristrem map, not the one you return to).

Originally Posted by wyatan

- I would swap the spell distribution: Stoneskin and Berserker in the spell book, Trap and Nature Call at the shop.
The reason is that Stoneskin and Berserker are both "mainstream" for the warrior class (support spells) and in-character for an orc, while Trap and Nature Call present alternate strategical approaches. So those should be an option at the player's discretion, not an "imposed choice".
- There are two medals that require casting a few spells a lot of time, I believe one spell from each selection should be made available to the player from the start (either by picking spells from both lists, or by editing the medal spell lists to include the new spell selection).

Tried it with the way you suggested at first (read my earlier posts) and it had very little to no impact on helping Bagyr do no loss.

Playtesting with Bagyr was very important here and unfortunately I came to the conclusion that he needs: 1) Orc Scout for summoning of Wolves and 2) Trap spell so that you can get 3 Traps with Level 2 Diversion + Level 1 Trapper Medal. I tried a lot of other spell combinations that made sense for a Warrior / Orc and they simply were not viable with only 10 to 15 Mana for no loss.

It is not possible to get a spell school (i.e. Order, etc.) @Bagyr Level 5 (I think he needs to be about level 7 or 8 before he has enough magic runes to get a spell school) so you have to give him a spell that can be cast at the beginning of the game that is actually useful to him and the only one that really helps is Trap through the Diversion / Trapper Medal route.

Due to this, it really makes no difference between whether he starts with Scrolls of Animal Call, Stone Skin, and Berserker or he buys them. I went with Stone Skin and Berserker as purchased spells since the sum of them is cheaper than one Animal Call scroll (his start scroll), thus saving him a little bit of money. Don't forget there are also 2 more level 1 scrolls that he can buy from the Troll Shop so he might also get Whirlwind, which I think is a good Orc scroll.

Originally Posted by wyatan

Daert

- Same observation concerning the female vampires as for Bagyr's orc scout.
(Although that quest line is pretty silly in the game, since female vampires clearly already exist).

I don't think this one is as really any concern since you can go purchase them by going to Monteville (i.e. no quest needed to get 10, although you need a quest to get more than that). It adds to the game flavor by starting with them and you get exposed to the only new Undead troop right away.

Strangely, they are not as good as regular Vampires (at least for the early game since their numbers are too few to use their ability that disables an enemy and they can't increase their numbers if one dies).

Originally Posted by wyatan

- On my first playthrough, I got the feeling the game was trolling me: you get Poison Skull as a damage spell... while most of the initial opponents are poison resistant!
Furthermore, Poison Skull is not really in-character for a vampire.
So I'd ditch it.

Poison Skull has always been one of the obvious Undead level 1 spells going back to The Legend. It is the only offensive spell cast by the Undead Statue in arenas so it totally fits giving it to an Undead Mage at the start of the game, even though all the enemies are resistant to it as you mention.

Originally Posted by wyatan

Frost Grasp would be more "vampirish", and I believe it's a spell that gets little love anyway (well, by me at least, lol). So I'd make that the spellbook spell instead of just a scroll.

Frost Grasp is the perfect starting spell for Daert due to the units in the Catacombs. Fortunately, it is easily added to his casting repertoire before even getting there since he starts with a scroll.

Poison Skull is actually just as good if not better suited for early Portland than Frost Grasp due to higher damage potential and lack of resistance of opposing troops. Since you'll be level 3 by the time you are finished with Portland, you'll then be able to learn Frost Grasp for your Catacombs run, so starting with Poison Skull and then learning Frost Grasp seems like a natural progression (although there is no denying having Frost Grasp only would work well, too).

Originally Posted by wyatan

- Kamikaze is an interesting tactical spell (and also one that's not getting much use I believe), and it's been proven to be enough to beat the shelter fights (although that's tough), but again, not very "vampirish".

This may be true, but we really don't know anything about Daert's background, so who knows, he could have been experimenting with explosives as a mage and it is a great way to get you to experiment with a spell that is hardly used in the game (or any King's Bounty game for that matter). Giving it to you as a scroll at the start seems like a great opportunity to allow players to experiment with this spell.

Originally Posted by wyatan

Call of Death would be more thematic (although its tactical usefulness here, especially for no loss, is doubtful).

This was my exact thought process, too, but Call of Death simply costs too much Mana / is not powerful enough at the beginning of the game to really make a difference. I really, really tried to see if that spell would be of help since it seems perfect for Daert. Unfortunately, it just does not help through the Shelter fights and it is also redundant with the Necromancer's ability who can use it more effectively. If it actually resurrected troops, then that would be huge, but it doesn't.

So all-in-all, I think the changes I made to both Bagyr and Daert capitalize on their play styles and give you a flavor of all the new Orc and Undead troops at the beginning of the game, just like Neoline gets Fire Elementals and Blood Priestesses very early (the new Demon units).

The game is actually still very challenging such that you may end up skipping the big Spider stack in the Catacombs, but you at least should try that stack. I was able to do it with Neoline in my original (unmodded) Impossible playthrough and Bagyr was able to do it with this mod, although it was very, very hard. Daert was also able to do it with this mod as well. So mission accomplished!

I also think the spell combinations for both are very well suited for Warrior and Mage playing styles keeping in mind the Mana pool available to each character early, which is a significant constraint on the viability / utility of various spell / troop combinations.

Perhaps there is a way for Bagyr to do it without Orc Scouts, but I haven't found the combination, yet, while sticking to Orc-only troops.

Thanks for your comments - give it a try and post back here with any new thoughts / insights!

/C\/C\

[MattCaspermeyer]

Originally Posted by ckdamascus

Gave it a whirl since my "give myself some fairly ridiculous troops" option failed to result in a no loss. Couldn't quite do it since the elves still do some pretty ridiculous damage. Not sure if you tested it yourself and found some strange way to beat it. If so, I hope it isn't one of those really narrow set of options to do it.

I did try it out at least twice with some different variants - the narrowness is that you have to use the Trap spell to get you the Trapper Medal and go Diversion Level 2 when you get Level 5 Bagyr. The +25% Trap damage, 3 starting Traps and possibly 3 to 4 more from your Trap spell are very critical to beating the Elven and Human Shelter stacks.

You also have to buy all the units from the Troll Shop (well the level 4 and below ones) because they are what you use to augment your troop stack sizes as you level up after Tristrem.

Originally Posted by ckdamascus

Maybe we should try to figure out why demoness or vampire works. They actually have nuke spells or a useful tree (for the sake of the early battles). Demoness has diversions which gives her traps AND a very strong summoner unit early on. She also has a nuke so this gives her a very good chance. Vampire has nukes and a special unit that can restore all HP and it is fast enough to kite a fair set of units. Also with the right spell and proper usage of his magic skill tree, he can really turn the tide.

Bagyr's summoner is the Orc Scout - you've got to summon those Wolves, and you also have to use your Shamans to summon totems for the enemy ranged troops to waste their attacks on. The Catapults can also absorb a bit of damage as they are often targeted by the Elven stack. The Orcs / Veteran Orcs are your tanks so use them and your nuke spell is Trap. Don't forget about Healing Totems and the Magic Axe that heals all your troops - these are very key!

In both playthroughs, I ended up putting the Spirit Talkers in reserve as they seemed too fragile for the Elves, but I never had the maximum of them.

You should have an option of 6 different troops to choose from so you should be able to find the right combination.

Originally Posted by ckdamascus

Orc has, at best, in the might tree has onslaught for initiative which is only useful if you could actually do meaningful damage early game. You simply don't have enough leadership to hit that minimum threshold of useful damage. Nevermind that if you go straight for onslaught, you will miss out on the more useful rage tree abilities later.

Yep - you've hit the nail on the head here! None of the Might Tree skills are useful early - you have to save the Runes to get Diversion, preferably to Level 2 when Bagyr reaches Level 5. A point in Meditation gives you 1 more Trap cast per battle, which is very important.

Originally Posted by ckdamascus

Orc magic is pretty bad since he has the lowest starting mana and no way to even have it recover mid battle. Even if you got the trap trophy after wasting tons of time, it will hardly be of much use. 2 traps per battle then the snore fest of waiting a few minutes to let your rage disappear and mana go back up.

You are actually dead wrong here - this is the only thing that will tip the balance in your favor.

Did you buy the Clay Bowl from the Troll Shop? That gives you +5 Mana and 3 Traps a battle to work on your Trapper Medal, which should be doable by the time you are done with the Catacombs. This gives you +1 Trap and +25% Trap Damage (only to starting Traps, not cast ones - a very important note). You should also be able to get Level 1 Diversion by Bagyr Level 3 so you should be another +1 Trap and I was able to get Level 2 Diversion by Bagyr Level 5 in both my trials.

Originally Posted by ckdamascus

Orc needs a LOT more units or better spells to have a good chance to start with some variety. I went in with a demon, dark paladin, orc veterans, and shaman and still failed. I'll admit though the starting orc units was a great surprise with tons of variety and potential but without a solid tank or two, it simply doesn't hold up.

It is all in how you use them - they should be able to hold their own against the Elven and Human stacks if you are using your Shamans / Orc Scouts properly as well as your Orcs (not very tanky, but just enough) and your Orc Veterans (still not as tanky as your Orc Scouts and Shamans so don't forget that). There is a bit of a learning curve here that you may have to go through, but you should be able to do it.

It, honestly, was significantly easier than the Ball of Lightning and Kamikaze Daert playthrough's I did in the unmodded game that I posted about in the No-Loss topic. I was able to even do the big Spider stack in the Catacombs with this troop (although sometimes you can do this stack no problem and get beat by the Elven / Human Shelter stacks).

Originally Posted by ckdamascus

Anyway, what's all this talk about using "out of control" units? Will it still count as losses? (guessing it will) also if they are the last units remaining, does combat end?

Yes they count as losses and if they are the last ones remaining, you lose.

Well, thanks for giving it a try, @ckdamascus - post here what your strategy was and what your Tristrem exit troops were and maybe I can give you some more pointers...

I did mention that it would still be very challenging due to how much Bagyr is crippled so please see if you can employ these tips and keep trying!

Also, it is a bit boring, but try the Furious Goblin money farming trick if you have Dryads in one of the 3 Tristrem stacks so that you can buy the Trapper item - that will make it even easier (note that I did not buy this item in either trial so it is not needed, but put there as something to try to get). If you are having trouble, you need to farm as much money as possible and buy all the stuff you can (items and units at least) from the Troll Shop - good luck!

/C\/C\

[ckdamascus]

But matt, that's precisely my point about having a "railroaded" one-way to beat the mission. I mean it's great you are basically mimicking the demoness' way to get through, but I've already done that build.

- Can't use spirit walkers
- Have to level up trapper
- Have to be level 5 which means you have to annoyingly beat all the other stacks ahead of time

I'm sorry, that's sort of lame. I did that sort of build with the demoness, so why should we have to do it again with the warrior? You outlined a SINGLE path to be able to do it nevermind it highlights the greatest boredom of the mage back in Armored Princess -- waiting for your stupid mana to regenerate with high rage.

To top it all off, I bet if I get an "unlucky" roll of strong troops I'll have wasted all that time trying to level up just to fail on the elf shelter mission.

I mean its great that this build will prob work most of the time. It's terrible that it's the only build that works. You shouldn't really have to be FORCED into going with diversions and traps especially as a warrior when this is the "prescribed" method for the demoness who can natively get diversion more easily. Nevermind that some people actually HATE having traps on the field for later on.

[MattCaspermeyer]

I hear you, but unfortunately, I have not found another way to do it with respect to the constraints I've imposed and I've really been trying, believe me.

Here are all the problems that I've tried to solve with Bagyr with this mod:

• No good units at start and in Tristrem - most Orc troops are very weak compared to Undead / Demon variants, the best troop, Veteran Orcs, does have a chance to have a few more sold in the shop, but the chance is 25%.
• Leadership too low - he'll only have about 400 Leadership @Level 5 by the time he's at the Shelter so at most he can command 2 to 4 level 4 troops depending on their leadership.
• Very low mana - unmodded game he'd have 16 Mana by the time you got to the shelter.
• No shops after Tristrem - no way to get any troops to augment his starting troops after leaving this place until the Shelter and those troops are pretty much no help.
• No spells to aid that path - Slow and Haste do nothing to really help solve this problem.

I've tried to use the following constraints for Bagyr:

• Use only Orc troops
• Use spells / abilities that do not require a lot of Mana and actually are useful in the goal of no loss
• Use Skills that are selectable from runes acquired during level up that aid in achieving no loss

Considering the above, though, this mod fixes a lot of the problems I identified above:

• No good units at start and in Tristrem - gives at least 1 of each level 4 Orc unit as well as at least 2 of each level 3 Orc unit. This gives great variability to your starting lineup.
• Leadership too low - I didn't necessarily fix this issue, but I do provide sufficient troops in the Troll shop to at least maximize 2 out of the 5 troop stacks you decide to use going forward to the shelter.
• Very low mana - the Clay Bowl gives +5 Mana and +6 with Meditation so you should have at least 21 Mana once you get to the Shelter.
• No shops after Tristrem - improved the Troll shop so that you can buy some good stuff before traveling onward that should really help with your predicament.
• No spells to aid that path - Trap does a great job to help Bagyr with using his army / available skills to at least do no loss impossible.

Let's face it, you have to use Diversion, which I know Neoline uses as well and even Daert will pick it, too, but that's really all we got to work with when using the above constraints.

The only other ideas I got are to break one or more of the above constraints. There are probably a number of level 4 units you can add to the shop to help you with going forward: Neutrals such as Assassins, Beholders, and Royal Griffins; Lizards such as Brontors, Choshas, and Highterants; perhaps even Vikings with Valkyrie's. You'd probably also need the Gifts spell since with 16 Mana you could cast it once on one of those troops and you could then use their charged ability 3 more times.

That's about the only other way I think you could give Bagyr a chance - we're really boxed into a corner on this one due to the weakness of the Warrior's Might Tree for the first few skills - not a single one helps, the weakness of the Orc troops in general, and the lack of no spells and Mana.

Let's face it, though, people are going to pick Diversion anyway since it is the only useful path early for pretty much Warrior or Paladin and you have the runes to do it. So I think this funnels our early choices and we'll end up picking it anyway.

That leaves us with changing the Might Tree to give you some good bonuses with the first and second tier skills that are appealing alternatives to the Spirit Tree. Things such as Start Defense from TL might be good if you could get 40% Physical resistance (probably have it last 1 round for each point in it) for a few rounds. I'd go with +10% / 1 round, +20% / 2 rounds, +40% / 3 or 4 rounds for levels 1 through 3. Endurance could possibly be changed to this. Should have enough Runes to get it to level 3 by the time you were Level 5. We could also add 200, 500, and 1000 Leadership to a skill, which would be huge early in the game! Or perhaps you get +100 for each point in the first row of Might Skills. This would encourage you to pick them, the trick though is that you'd only be able to max out 2 out of the 5 stacks after Tristrem from the Troll shop. Although, I guess if you have 1000+ Leadership worth of Spiders / Snakes maybe using the eggs in the Catacombs would be enticing if you could somehow keep those fragile troops from losing a unit. Once again, Physical Resistance during the first couple of rounds might be a really good idea.

See if we can keep these constraints:

• Use only Orc troops
• Use spells / abilities that do not require a lot of Mana and actually are useful in the goal of no loss
• Prefer Might Tree Skills

Try to think of some Might Tree Skill changes that might help Bagyr - that's really the problem we're dealing with here. I think the above unit selection is sufficient, but we really need more than +Attack / +Defense bonuses from the Might Tree otherwise there is no reason to pick any of those skills and we need Bagyr to have a stronger army than Neoline's if we're not going to use the Trapper Medal / Diversion route.

/C\/C\

[ckdamascus]

Honestly, I think the best option is to raise the starting leadership and give Bagyr more units. I think your unit selection was really good given the constraints as it does have all the ingredients necessary.

It's somewhat bizarre that Bagyr gets less leadership than Neoline. Classically, warriors get more leadership and I realize the leadership buff was to make the paladin class more enticing.

I mean if I have to use diversion/traps I guess I have to use them. As a mage, I didn't have to use them but I modified the game to give myself ancient vampires. Even then I don't think I was able to no-loss the shelter guys but I made sure my vampires lived.

Not sure if my 'op' orc army could win with losses. I suppose I could just "eat" the losses. The problem is if I take losses too soon, I might actually have trouble in the Whitehall fight (even with jealousy, it doesn't last that long).

[MattCaspermeyer]

You know I thought about this some more and the easiest way to try out if more leadership would work would be to simply use the "leadership #" and "doublearmy" cheat codes and then try it without going Trapper Medal / Diversion with my mod.

You could also use the "magicbook" cheat to give yourself all the spells and then experiment with spell combos and your units. That's what I did when I was experimenting with Daert's winning spell combos.

It is curious that Bagyr starts with only 200 Leadership (only 20 more than Daert) while Neoline starts with 270. Although it probably wouldn't make much of a difference, I could see Bagyr starting with 250 Leadership instead of 200.

Bagyr's Leadership levelup is 15 per level so starting at 200 + 30 + 45 + 60 + 75, he'd have 410 Leadership @Level 5 (+210). If he started at 250 he'd have 460.

With the -10% Leadership Requirement, Orc Scouts and Shamans are 180, Veteran Orcs 126, Orcs 67.5, Spirit Talkers 45, and Catapults 117. With those Leadership values you could have the following maximum troops (with 460 Leadership):

• Catapult - 3
• Spirit Talker - 10
• Orc - 6
• Veteran Orc - 3
• Orc Scout - 2
• Shaman - 2

Now imagine if he could get another 250 Leadership from somewhere, so now we're at 710:

• Catapult - 6
• Spirit Talker - 15
• Orc - 10
• Veteran Orc - 5
• Orc Scout - 3
• Shaman - 3

And then lastly another -10% Orc Leadership Reduction - Orc Scouts and Shamans are 160, Veteran Orcs 112, Orcs 60, Spirit Talkers 40, and Catapults 104:

• Catapult - 6
• Spirit Talker - 17
• Orc - 11
• Veteran Orc - 6
• Orc Scout - 4
• Shaman - 4

That might be enough to get him there without going Diversion / Trapper. Of course you can only pick 5 out of the 6 armies, but this could be a target number of troops to experiment with.

Perhaps Heroism can add Leadership Reduction bonuses to Orc troops and the Wooden Breastplate could add +150 Leadership and the Orc Warlord Helm + 100.

We then have the last problem of how do we get his army to have these numbers of troops when you get to the Shelter (perhaps a Recruiter type bonus that automatically adds troops like Goblin Shamans and Orc Chieftains in CW). The shop could only be used for maximizing two of those stacks.

I may play around with this in the future, but I've been playing my Deart Phoenix game lately so we'll see...

/C\/C\

[Ezrekiel]

I think its the requirement to use only Orc troops which makes fixing Bagyr's start so unnecessarily complicated.
Sure, Neoline can do impossible/no loss as is with using all demon troops.

For Daert, things are a bit different already: in the unmodified game he has to rely on getting a ultra-rare spell from the ore cart and he will use his 2 free Vampires only. Using just one undead stack does not quite feel the same as using all undead troops to me, although that might be considered a technicality.

More imporant is that relying on a strong spell like Phoenix early on does feel like a natural choice for the mage class, while turning Bagyr into a trapper imho does not.

I think ckdamascus summed up my feelings on this pretty well :

Originally Posted by ckdamascus

I mean its great that this build will prob work most of the time. It's terrible that it's the only build that works. You shouldn't really have to be FORCED into going with diversions and traps especially as a warrior when this is the "prescribed" method for the demoness who can natively get diversion more easily. Nevermind that some people actually HATE having traps on the field for later on.

In my suggestion, I would also like to keep the changes from the unmodified game to a minimum -this should be a fix for a developers oversight and not a complicated mod.

Because I'm not a modder myself I do not know if these ideas are technically possible to do, but if its possible, how about these suggestions:

1) Find a short-time ally who also flees from the forces of light (after all they advance everywhere, dont they ?). The easiest idea here might be the troll having a child he wants Bagyr to take with him to safety. A single Troll with weaker stats, less hitpoints (2-300 maybe?) and correspondingly lower leadership requirement might be a more elegant solution. He'd stay with Bagyr until he can leave the shelter, which just happens to be after the whitehill fight(s).
Should it not be possible to mod/implement such a baby troll into the game just add one additional stack of a friendly troop as desired on the map (or purchasable somewhere) maybe ?

or

2) I like the idea of giving Bagyr more leadership to deal with this in his own way, but I think this should be a temporary buff as to not change the balance of the campaign for all the fights AFTER whitehill. Is it possible to offer an artifact with a +x Leadership bonues and have the game remove it after whitehall ? Or maybe its a cursed artifact with +leadership and -100% max rage ?
Some additional troops would be necessary to offer for him to buy, but this would feel like giving the player MORE options as opposed to forcing him down the only working skill path.

or

3) mod the game to reduce the stack sizes of the initial battles to a manageable amount while leaving the game otherwise unchanged.

So is any of these mods technically possible or am I just dreaming ?

[MattCaspermeyer]

These are all very interesting points...

Originally Posted by Ezrekiel

I think its the requirement to use only Orc troops which makes fixing Bagyr's start so unnecessarily complicated.

I certainly agree with you here.

Originally Posted by Ezrekiel

Sure, Neoline can do impossible/no loss as is with using all demon troops.

For Daert, things are a bit different already: in the unmodified game he has to rely on getting a ultra-rare spell from the ore cart and he will use his 2 free Vampires only. Using just one undead stack does not quite feel the same as using all undead troops to me, although that might be considered a technicality.

With this mod, Daert has more useful Undead troops and it just feels more natural for a Mage.

Originally Posted by Ezrekiel

More imporant is that relying on a strong spell like Phoenix early on does feel like a natural choice for the mage class, while turning Bagyr into a trapper imho does not.

Relying on Phoenix for Daert doesn't feel right to me since its an Order spell. With this mod, Daert uses Chaos spells, which are more natural of a path for an Undead Mage - at least at the beginning of the game.

As far as Bagyr, I honestly think the Trapper Medal / Diversion route is the most natural for an Orc / Warrior.

Think about it, which of the 3 characters is most likely to be out trapping? It's a Warrior and an Orc to boot.

Diversion belongs in the Might tree, honestly, and probably Heroism with its +Defense belongs in the Spirit tree. The problem is that most of us played Neoline first and we did not question the fact that Diversion is in her tree rather than the Might tree and so as you all so aptly point out, we've done this before with respect to trapping.

This is the real problem, to me though: Diversion is in the wrong tree!

Originally Posted by Ezrekiel

In my suggestion, I would also like to keep the changes from the unmodified game to a minimum -this should be a fix for a developers oversight and not a complicated mod.

That was one of my goals with this mod as well, plus there is only a limited amount of things we can do with using KB_DB_EDIT (the tool I've been using to edit the *.LOC files).

Originally Posted by Ezrekiel

Because I'm not a modder myself I do not know if these ideas are technically possible to do, but if its possible, how about these suggestions:

1) Find a short-time ally who also flees from the forces of light (after all they advance everywhere, dont they ?). The easiest idea here might be the troll having a child he wants Bagyr to take with him to safety. A single Troll with weaker stats, less hitpoints (2-300 maybe?) and correspondingly lower leadership requirement might be a more elegant solution. He'd stay with Bagyr until he can leave the shelter, which just happens to be after the whitehill fight(s).
Should it not be possible to mod/implement such a baby troll into the game just add one additional stack of a friendly troop as desired on the map (or purchasable somewhere) maybe ?

I pretty much know how to do all this except for how to take the unit away. The strange thing here, though, is that you could probably accomplish the same thing with giving him 2 to 3 of either Brontors, Choshas, or Highterants. The Highterants, especially with their egg laying or the Choshas with their summoning would probably be all you need to push them over the top. I then wouldn't have to use the Orc Scouts, thus preserving that questline for later in the game as originally intended.

Originally Posted by Ezrekiel

or

2) I like the idea of giving Bagyr more leadership to deal with this in his own way, but I think this should be a temporary buff as to not change the balance of the campaign for all the fights AFTER whitehill. Is it possible to offer an artifact with a +x Leadership bonues and have the game remove it after whitehall ? Or maybe its a cursed artifact with +leadership and -100% max rage ?
Some additional troops would be necessary to offer for him to buy, but this would feel like giving the player MORE options as opposed to forcing him down the only working skill path.

More Leadership does seem natural to me, too. I don't see a need to take it away as long as it is not a whole lot more. The +150 and +100 from items is a lot at the start of the game, but those items will be ditched later, so I see no need to curse them.

As an alternate, it does not seem unreasonable to me to give each class 20 times their levelup leadership rate for starting Leadership: Bagyr: 15 * 20 = 300, Neoline: 20 * 20 = 400, Daert: 10 * 20 = 200. I don't see that as being unreasonable since it is based on their levelup capability.

As far as troops are concerned, the right amount of troops sold at the Troll shop would allow you to use two full stacks in the Shelter with your reserve slots. This is pretty much now this mod works now.

Originally Posted by Ezrekiel

or

3) mod the game to reduce the stack sizes of the initial battles to a manageable amount while leaving the game otherwise unchanged.

So is any of these mods technically possible or am I just dreaming ?

I had actually considered this, but Neoline seems pretty well tuned for the stack sizes in the Shelter / Whitehill so I went with changing Bagyr and Daert instead.

An alternate is to add some level 3 / 4 Orc troops to the Shelter shop when you get there to augment the ones you already have (of course these would also be available to Neoline and Daert as well).

All of your ideas sound doable for the most part or implementable with perhaps some limitations or alternates that are roughly equivalent.

But let's hit the reset button for a moment and consider this:

If you played Bagyr first, and saw Diversions where Heroism was, would you have thought twice about it or just picked the skill and kept playing?

For me, I honestly wouldn't have thought about it and just kept playing. The Traps seem more natural to a Warrior for me. The skipping turn part, could be more natural for Neoilne / Spirit tree. We could split this skill apart, putting the trapping ability in Might and keeping the skipping turn part in Spirit.

Has anyone played Daert with this mod? I think his playthrough now works really well as he can focus on the Magic tree and use his various Chaos spells to great effect. So I think at least Daert is good now.

As far as Bagyr is concerned, I think the Trapper Medal / Diversion route is much more natural for him than Neoline. If the Trap part was in the Might tree to begin with then we really wouldn't be talking about this.

I think I could possibly remove Orc Scouts if I gave Bagyr the opportunity to get some level 4 Lizard troops. I don't think there are any eggs, but it is easy to add Brontor / Chosha / Highterant eggs to the game and have the Troll shop sell 3 or so of them (probably have it be random between one of those 3). You could then hatch them as needed to augment your army. They are not Orc troops, but I don't see it being unreasonable for the Troll shop to have some exotic Lizard troop eggs. As Lizard troops are not normally in the game, Bagyr could be unique with the opportunity to play with one or potentially more of them (you could even use Sacrifice later to augment their numbers if you really, really wanted to play them).

I like the ideas coming here, let's keep thinking of more ideas, but let's also not let the Neoline playthrough cloud our thoughts with what might be better suited for Bagyr.

I'm actually partial to the Lizard egg idea now that I'm thinking about it some more. There could be a lot of potential here, especially if you buy them as eggs. I'd have to see how much they'd cost, they might be expensive. Using Griffins and Ents as a guide, Highterant Eggs would be 520 a pop, Choshas 1500, and Brontors 1700. I'm not sure why Highterants are so much cheaper than the others, but they only cost 260 compared to 1100 for Choshas and 1300 for Brontors (egg cost is roughly Troop Cost + Leadership + Hitpoints).

Resetting back to the unmodded game, if I made it such that you had max Shamans and max of either Spirit Talkers, Catapults, Orcs, or Veteran Orcs by the time you hit the Shelter as well as a random level 4 Lizard troop maxed out due to eggs, that may go a long way as you could split the Shamans into at least 2 stacks to double up on their totems keeping ranged troops busy. The Choshas / Highterants could summon / lay eggs to get you some disposable troops or the Brontors could dig and attack remotely. Your other Orc troops could then support the others as needed, either dishing out ranged damage or protecting against melee troops.

If I gave Bagyr at least 250 Leadership to start the game, he'd have exactly 460 at Level 5 so that he could have at least 2 Brontors / Choshas or 3 Highterants. He'd have enough Leadership for 2 Shamans.

Shelter fights could be:

• 1 Shaman
• Maximum of either Spirit Talkers, Catapults, Orcs, Veteran Orcs
• Departing Tristrem numbers of either Spirit Talkers, Catapults, Orcs, Veteran Orcs
• 2 or 3 Lizard Egg troop
• 1 Shaman

I'd still give you Trap as a spell - you don't have to go Trapper Medal / Diversion if you don't want to although it'd be easier if you did.

I wonder if the above lineup would be sufficient to defeat the Elven / Human Shelter stacks. With the Orc Scouts, I continuously summoned Wolves multiple times so this may still not be enough.

We could then augment with more Leadership if the above proves insufficient or I could give the option of getting another Lizard troop, probably always Highterants and then either Brontors or Choshas.

Thanks for all the comments so far - keep 'em coming!

/C\/C\