[MattCaspermeyer]

Originally Posted by jorko80

I attached the GM mod to this message.

Thanks - I took a brief look; there are a lot of files so it will take me a while to go through them...

Originally Posted by jorko80

They do "no loss games",because thats a way to challenge themselves . But for me it's a boring way. The game should be made harder with mods like yours for example

No loss is nice if that is challenging for the player, although challenge takes many shapes.

For me, I think, it is simply to make the challenging journey more fun and interesting. It is up to the player to choose how they want to play, but my hope is that it is at least more enjoyable than it was before...

Originally Posted by jorko80

Actually I am not loosing any troops ,except some 1st level units,that are not so important in late game anyway.

This seems more HOMM-like as you would be very judicious with keeping your higher level units from dying, while you didn't mind losing lower level units here and there...

Originally Posted by jorko80

I still don't agree. Sheep's duration should be 1,1,2 or maximum 1,2,2 and with the intel boost it will go up and ofcourse one of the babies of Feanora which gives -14% magic resistance to enemies increases the duration further. And that particular baby is like level 10 ,compared to the others.

Fair enough, but know this:

Sheep does not work on the Undead, Plants, and Golems (because the unit needs to be at least animal like and living, not dead; Undead were included in all Sheep normal KB (TL/AP/CW/WotN)) and is second only to Hypnosis in Mana / Crystals cost for a level 1 spell. Hypnosis costs the most because not only does it neutralize an enemy troop, but allows you to employ them directly against the enemy. So Hypnosis > Sheep, at least at Level 1.

Now with that said, I have a formula for determining the increase in spell Mana / Crystal cost that is based on the increase in spell power. So for example, if Level 1 Sheep is 1 round and affects through level 2, then if Level 2 Sheep is 2 rounds and affects through level 3 then I use that for determining the Mana / Crystal cost for the spell upgrade. To keep it simple, I simply average the increase in spell power and multiply that by the Level 1 values. So for Sheep we get 22 * [ average( 2/1, 3/2 ) = 1.75 ] = 38.5, flooring gives us 38. Note that I did not average the level increase, but just the max level (either way would be valid, i.e. 1-2 is 1.5 and 1-3 is 2, which is 2/1.5 = 1.33 - this would give a smaller rise so my preference is to consider max level since I think it is more about the max level affected, not the mean). The same holds true for Level 3 Sheep: 3 rounds, level 1-4 - 22 * [ average( 3/1, 4/2 ) = 2.5 ] = 55.

Crystals are always half the Mana cost (floored).

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.

Whether they are balanced from another perspective, i.e. whether 3 rounds is too high for a spell duration of this spell type is more of opinion, although I think you'll see that I like to increase all statistics unless the spell goes mass. In that case, the jump from single to mass keeps all statistics even and as it turns out (since it is like casting it 5 times if you have 5 stacks) mass spells are 5 times the Mana cost. With that said, if I used the values you proposed, the Sheep Mana / Crystal cost would come down to compensate for the Level 2 and 3 variants and so therefore the spell is perfectly balanced versus its initial cost, whether the values I propose or yours are used.

Incidentally:

• Sheep Level 1: 1 Round, Units Level 1-2 - Mana / Crystals: 22 / 11
• Sheep Level 2: 1 Round, Units Level 1-3 - Mana / Crystals: 27 / 13
• Sheep Level 3: 2 Rounds, Units Level 1-4 - Mana / Crystals: 44 / 22

Those would be per your request, so if you would prefer those values then feel free to implement them in SPELLS.TXT.

I really like this system as it ensures that everything is truly balanced, since it is formulaic.

By the way, I used this system to balance the units in my Emperor of the Fading Suns Hyperion mod a long time ago and it was highly regarded by that community as one of the best mods developed for that game. EFS suffered from a serious imbalance in the units because (it seemed like anyway) that most unit statistics and resource requirements were haphazardly assigned. So I've had a lot of success using this approach in modding games before KB.

This touch is in a lot of the other areas of my mod as well, including skill abilities where I actually assign how much of the stat is increased by a Rune. For example, if a skill has +1 Attack, I usually require it to have +1 Might Rune for each point increase in Attack (+1 Defense / Mind Rune; +1 Intellect / Magic Rune). Once again this lends itself to automatically balancing it because every Rune is quantified.

This approach was mostly used in TL and I've been using it in the skill tree design of AP / CW.

Originally Posted by jorko80

Sorry about that. I initially thought that you changed this unit to have no melee penalty. Maybe I remembered it wrong from GM where it has penalty. But it's not a big deal anyway,so don't bother. Sorry one more time, I thought it's just a bug in your mod.

Okay, I'll leave them alone. In fact, unless a unit was seriously under-powered / useless I for the most part left them alone.

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.

Originally Posted by jorko80

That will make the creature unbeatable ,so probably you shouldn't do it. Otherwise your ideas sound really good. I hope you will successfully implement them.

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...

Thanks again for the great comments!

Matt

/C\/C\