Heroes of Might and Magic 3 Tomes Alpha Mod Development for AP

[MattCaspermeyer]

Originally Posted by Fatt_Shade

If you have time check fast http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=28724 , Csimby added 4/5 lvl for skills. I wanted to make it so warrior have 5th lvl might skill tree, paladin 5th lvl in mind, and mage 5th lvl in magic but couldn`t figure out how to block other classes form having more then 3 skill lvl in other tree.

Okay, I now have time to start working on modding in the weekday evenings again (whew! was super busy!).

I think I may have a solution to allowing class heros have their class-specific skill trees go higher - I need to experiment with my idea, but I think I know how to do it. I'll let you know how it goes...

The only thing is I'm not sure if I'll want to implement it in my mod, but I can identify how it can be done if my idea works so other people can still implement it in their mods if they wish.

So make a good case for why level 4 and possibly higher skill levels are a good thing. I often thought it would be neat for the Mage hero to have a 4th level of each magic school, but I wasn't sure how you'd be able to cast lower level spells with CTRL and SHIFT. Anyway, I probably won't need much convincing, but it just seems tougher to keep it balanced without simply making it so that you now have 4 levels to get to where you were with 3.

So, for example, take Heroism: +1 / +3 / +6 Attack for 3 skill levels, what should be the progression for 4? +1 / +3 / +6 / +10? Seems like that would be reasonable since the difference between each level increase is based on the skill level and consistent, but is this increase too big? And what about for level 5? +1 / +3 / +6 / +10 / +15? That would be the proper progression, but a total of +15 attack - wow! Do these sound reasonable, are they overpowered, and are they really needed? Another implementation could be: +1 / +3 / +5 / +7 / +9, but it seems like you're not getting as much progression from level 2 to 3 and beyond as you should and so this is kind of what I'm getting at with respect to skill power vs implementation: +1 / +3 / +6 / +10 / +15 is a proper progression due to getting more and more return for the higher levels (which seems to be what is needed to make higher levels desireable).

Of course the rune requirements would be tied to the increase to aid in balancing and so a simple implementation of Heroism would be:

Level 1: +1 Attack, 1, 0, 0
Level 2: +3 Attack, 2, 0, 0
Level 3: +6 Attack, 3, 0, 0
Level 4: +10 Attack, 4, 0, 0
Level 5: +15 Attack, 5, 0, 0
Totals: 15, 0, 0 so you would get +15 Attack for 15 Might Runes total. This would be a consistent progression with consistent rune use. If you start making the higher levels require more runes then it is simply not worth it to spend on that skill since you're getting less for the same number of runes.

By the way, Heroism will most likely have a +Hero Attack component and then a +Attack to certain level units, similar to how I did Training in TL. Depending on the number of skill levels I'd implement it something like this:

Level 1: +1 Attack, +2 Attack to units of level 1-2; 2, 0, 0
Level 2: +3 Attack, +3 Attack to units of level 1-3; 4, 0, 0
Level 3: +6 Attack, +4 Attack to units of level 1-4; 6, 0, 0

Adding a 4th level here wouldn't be too bad:

Level 4: +10 Attack, +5 Attack to all units; 8, 0, 0

A 5th level, though, would propably require a shift in the unit level requirement such that it would be:

Level 1: +1 Attack, +1 Attack to Level 1 units; 2, 0, 0
Level 2: +3 Attack, +2 Attack to Level 1-2 units; 4, 0, 0
Level 3: +6 Attack, +3 Attack to Level 1-3 units; 6, 0, 0
Level 4: +10 Attack, +4 Attack to Level 1-5 units; 8, 0, 0
Level 5: +15 Attack, +5 Attack to all units; 10, 0, 0
Totals: 30, 0, 0 for +15 Attack to your Hero and +5 Attack to all units (more beneficial to lower level units than higher level units).

This actually doesn't sound too bad, but the problem arises when I start looking at other skills, take Caution for example:

Level 1: +1 Defense, +10% Physical Resistance during first round, 0, 2, 0
Level 2: +2 Defense, +20% Physical Resistance during first round, 0, 2, 0
Level 3: +3 Defense, +40% Physical Resistance during first round, 0, 3, 0

The problem here is that I'd need to redo the progression noting that Resistance would be implemented exactly like Heroism except for +Defense instead of +Attack and that the Physical Resistance would be too high for level 4 and 5 so:

Level 1: +1 Defense, +5% Physical Resistance during first round, 0, 2, 0
Level 2: +2 Defense, +15% Physical Resistance during first round, 0, 3, 0
Level 3: +3 Defense, +30% Physical Resistance during first round, 0, 4, 0
Level 4: +4 Defense, +45% Physical Resistance during first round, 0, 4, 0
Level 5: +5 Defense, +60% Physical Resistance during first round, 0, 4, 0
Totals: 0, 17, 0 for +5 Defense and +60 Physical Resistance during the first round

Note that now it takes you to level 4 to get almost where you were at level 3 before and how it is also plateauing. So I'm not sure how useful it would be to have beyond level 3 here.

It seems like Resistance and Caution would work best with just 3 levels:

Resistance Level 1: +1 Defense, +2 Defense to Units Levels 1-2; 0, 2, 0
Resistance Level 2: +3 Defense, +3 Defense to Units Levels 1-3; 0, 4, 0
Resistance Level 3: +6 Defense, +4 Defense to Units Levels 1-4; 0, 6, 0
Totals Resistance: +6 Defense and +4 Defense for Unit Levels 1-4 for 0, 12, 0
Caution Level 1: +1 Defense, +5% Physical Resistance during round 1; 0, 2, 0
Caution Level 2: +3 Defense, +15% Physical Resistance during round 1; 0, 4, 0
Caution Level 3: +6 Defense, +30% Physical Resistance during round 1; 0, 6, 0
Totals Caution: +6 Defense and +30% Physical Resistance during round 1 for 0, 12, 0
Totals: +12 Defense, +4 Defense for Unit Levels 1-4, and +30% Physical Resistance during round 1 for 0, 24, 0. Seems like that is plenty and you get consistent progressions for both skills without it seeming to get too powerful. Doing it this way would allow us to extend to a 4th level for both skills if we thought going beyond level 3 would be a good idea and would look like:

Resistance Level 3: +10 Defense, +5 Defense to all Units; 0, 8, 0
Caution Level 3: +10 Defense, +50% Physical Resistance during round 1; 0, 8, 0

A 5th level would require the shift in +Unit Defense for Resistance (+1 Defense to Level 1 Units @Skill Level 1 instead of +2 Defense to Level 1-2 Units) and would get you to +75% Physical Resistance during the first round, which would be amazing.

What goes around, comes around, though, as the enemy heroes would use your skill system as the basis for their skill system and so you'd see similar bonuses for high-level enemy heroes so careful what you wish for!

I hope this gives you some insight into how I go about thinking about the skill level progressions and the thought that goes into the rune choice selection as well - nothing is arbitrarily chosen so that progression is consistent, rune requirements are consistent, and therefore balance has a better chance of being successfully implemented.

Certainly a nice thing about having more skill levels is that you certainly won't be able to get all the skills and so it would allow a player more flexibility in their skill choices and I think we'd find a lot more variability between player's hero skills at the end of the game (as well as more variability in the enemy heroes, especially at higher levels) since you'd choose higher skill levels based on how you played the game...

/C\/C\