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| Thread: Creature Experience (Just another wish, eh...) |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 4 · NEXT» |
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Valeriy
Mage of the Land
Naughty, Naughty Valeriy
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posted March 23, 2001 10:26 PM |
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Creature Experience (Just another wish, eh...)
GriffonCS from Heroes Community
Just another wish, eh... Posted 5-19-2000 19:30
Personally, I would like to see a heroes troops advance in skills and experience much like the hero does....the more they fight and the longer they hang around, the stronger they become. How nice would it be to have 500 skeles that have been fighting for you since week one, and have increased there stats because they are battle hardened?
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Valeriy
Mage of the Land
Naughty, Naughty Valeriy
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posted March 23, 2001 10:27 PM |
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Loki from Heroes Community
Re: Just another wish, eh... Posted 5-20-2000 08:36
I think that would be a good idea however i think it should be restricted to Class 1, 2 and 3 creatures.
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Valeriy
Mage of the Land
Naughty, Naughty Valeriy
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posted March 23, 2001 10:28 PM |
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zackary87kr from Heroes Community
Re: Just another wish, eh... Posted 6-6-2000 10:15
That would be very interesting. And depending on the number of, say, skeletons lost.. if new skeletons are recruited into the army.. their percent of experience goes down by a certain percentage depending upon the number of new recruits in that particular army. Intriguing..
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Valeriy
Mage of the Land
Naughty, Naughty Valeriy
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posted March 23, 2001 10:28 PM |
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Beldarion [guest] from Heroes Community
Re: Just another wish, eh... Posted 6-20-2000 06:29
That is a very interesting idea, ppls, and to expand upon this, the morale factor could be separated into the different groups on the battlefield... eg: if a lot of one group dies, the morale for that group lowers, but if that group kills a lot of creatures (or some defeats some really tough odds) their morale raises... On top of this, the morale factor could affect the speed at which the group gains in levels (say it's just eagerness) and this possibly affects the other units on the battlefield...
What do you guys think?
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Valeriy
Mage of the Land
Naughty, Naughty Valeriy
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posted March 23, 2001 10:29 PM |
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valera from Heroes Community
Experience can really work like this!!! Posted 6-26-2000 05:42
Adding to your good ideas, that's how it would work on groups of creatures:
say we have 10 skeletons and that group gains 1000 experience points, therefore if we remove a skeleton from that group, he has 1000 exp because each skel in the group has 1000. So group exp is the average experience. If you want to add 10 fresh skeletons to that group, each of which has 0 experience, that would result in a group of 20 skeletons with 500 average experience, in fact, if one skeleton was removed from there now, he would have 500 experience.
This would really work, although it's a bit weird the way experience averages, this will completely integrate into the game system and make you tresure the experienced stacks while allowing you to add new recruits to them, but a weakling will drop the exp of the whole group.
So, every creature's exp = group average exp.
When adding, add all individual exp and divide by number of creatures to get the average group exp.
This will also mean that no exp is lost.
Now comes the problem that you can just slot a new creature into a good group and give it experience, while exp of others in the group will drop. For this we may use the levels idea: creatures say level 6 and after retain their individual experience. And if one creature is killed from the stack, it will be a random creature.
As for how exp is gained and what it does, you all can imagine, probably as a percentage stats increase, maybe special abbilities at some amount of exp.
Watchatink?!?! 
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Valeriy
Mage of the Land
Naughty, Naughty Valeriy
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posted March 23, 2001 10:29 PM |
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Kristo [guest] from Heroes Community
Just another wish Posted 11-28-2000 16:32
I think what you guys are driving at is a creature level system similar to the game Lords of Magic. Creature levels are not based on how strong it is, but rather by how long it has been fighting. Everything starts at level one and gains experience as it fights. Furthermore, higher level heroes can train the troops they buy. This means you can buy your troops at level 2 or 3 (or whatever) instead of level 1.
However, this may not be feasible in a HoMM setting. LoM is based around small armies, where each creature is treated individually or in small groups of like 3 troops. One stack of 3 archers would be different from another stack of 3. With the sheer numbers of troops involved in the Heroes game, you could end easily up with seven different stacks of archers, and because of the current limit on army size, have no more room for anything else.
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Valeriy
Mage of the Land
Naughty, Naughty Valeriy
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posted March 23, 2001 10:29 PM |
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sikmar from Heroes Community
An alternate experience system Posted 11-29-2000 08:59
Hi, Heroes
I agree with you all: creatures may improve their stats when they survive a lot of battles, as it occurred in the old "Warlords II" game (in that game the creatures gained "medals" when they actively contributed to gain a battle).
Valera's system is quite good: making "experience gained" an additional characteristic for each INDIVIDUAL unit. So, when you mix some creatures, each one will keep his experience and an average experience will be calculated for the entire stack. I just have some addition to this system: if experience points come from the hit points you kill in battle, each creature should gain exclusively the hit points it has killed. This seems more lawful and avoids "reserve creatures" (those standing far from the front and simply looking at the battle) to gain experience while others fight for them.
The problem is: how to convert this experience in creature benefits? If a horde of skeletons reach level 2, a pop-up dialog could offer the player to improve their attack, defense, speed, etc. But what happens with this benefits when you mix that skeletons with new non-experienced ones (or more experienced ones). Should also the game calculate an average attack, average defense, etc? What do you think?
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Valeriy
Mage of the Land
Naughty, Naughty Valeriy
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posted March 23, 2001 10:30 PM |
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dr_st [guest] from Heroes Community
Re: experience and such Posted 11-29-2000 12:04
IMHO, it's too much too complicated calculations. Whether it's the monster which gets experience, or the hero, it eventually adds a number to the monster's base attack and defense skill.
About individual experience for each unit - that's not a great idea - that's IMPOSSIBLE. If there are 10,000 or 100,000 total units on the map, you cannot keep experience for each of them. You cannot calculate such a huge amount of info and you cannot save it in a saved game file. It will be HUGE saved game files, which will be constantly growing.
Other than that - maybe make speed increase with experience...
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Valeriy
Mage of the Land
Naughty, Naughty Valeriy
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posted March 23, 2001 10:30 PM |
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sikmar from Heroes Community
Is 100 kilobytes a HUGH save game? Posted 11-30-2000 16:27
Do you really think that saving each creatures's experience will take a lot of space? I don't think so. Imagine you can represent the experience level with a number in the range 0-255. Computer science says this is the range of numbers you can save in a single BYTE. So, if you have 100.000 creatures on a game, saving his experience stat will only add about 100 kilobytes to the savegame file size.
Of course, you can't save this experience with a so little number (I put it as an example), but using only 3 bytes you can save over 16.000.000 experience points, that should be enough. This makes a 300 Kb. increase to the file size, and, how much space takes the savefiles right now? I'm not sure, but I remember it was more than a Mb.
About the calculations necessary to play, don't understimate the speed of computers. With millions of single arithmetic operations per second, I don't think it will be a problem to deliver the experience points.
The idea of creatures experience can be good or bad (I was only proposing an alternative), but as Valera stated, it is perfectly suitable for the boys at 3DO.
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Valeriy
Mage of the Land
Naughty, Naughty Valeriy
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posted March 23, 2001 10:31 PM |
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valera from Heroes Community
Experience Points Posted 11-30-2000 19:10
Hi guys,
Dr_st, I think you have misread my idea, not every unit has experience, that would be silly, but every stack of units. I'll try to explain better:
A stack is a group of same units, for example 25 skeletons. Each stack has a number that represents experience points for that stack.
For example that stack of 25 skeletons gets 2634 experience points from battles. Now, if you wanted to split the stack into two spearate stacks, each new stack would have the same experience as the original stack. If you want to put those two back together straight away, the experience will also remain.
But if you have a stack of say 11 fresh new rookie skeletons with only 32 experience, joining them with the old experienced stack would work like this:
experience of resulting stack = (experience of stack1 x number of creatures in stack1 + experience of stack2 x number of creatures in stack2) / (number of creatures in stack1 + number of creatures in stack2)
exp = (2634x25 + 32x11)/(25+11) = 66202/36 = 1839
/ stands for "divided by"
The combined stack will have 1839 experience points.
This way the resulting stack would have the average experience, as rookies are able to learn something from the veterans, but they do lower their established discipline.
Upgrading a stack will not interfere with experience, it will make upgrading more attractive.
As Sikmar has said, the fresh recruits pretty much ruin the established experience of the stack. But it also brings in a huge strategic point, because otherways the armies would just grow and gain experience, but in this case the hero will have to think what to combine. Note that splitting the stack after adding the fresh units will not restore the average experience of the veterans, all will leave average.
Now how that experience will work.
Each stack will get a different amout of experience for the same task, that could work like this:
EXP = H x (T+L) / (U/2+M)
H - hit points killed on the target
T - base level of the target monster
L - experience level of the target monster
U - base level of the attacking unit
M - experience level of the attacking unit
This formula will ensure that units get more for killing veterans and at the same time get less for being veterans. That /2 coefficient needs to be adjusted to better balance the game. The number of creatures in a stack does not matter since they all attack.
Base level of a unit would be assigned to each unit and upgrade by game designers to reflect it's natural abbilities. Experience level of a unit will be determined from stack's experience points, and maybe adjusted with a level of a hero controlling the stack.
Experience points would increase the skills of the stack. There would be certain exp levels, same as for heroes, when units gain for example +1att, def, speed, damage. Each level would give different things for different units. Player would not have the choice to distribute points, otherways sombining the stacks would be too confusing later on. At certain levels the units could obtain new abbilities, that would make the game darn interesting, especially if some unit learns to teleport at level 10 or increases magic resistance with each level or gets a spell to cast at some stage. Maybe they could even evolve (Yay, pokemon! to a new unit, which is only possible by obtaining experience level of a certain amount. This way super units cannot be bought, they must be trained. That would keep us playing for hours.
That's a big one! Ideas?
Valeriy.
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Valeriy
Mage of the Land
Naughty, Naughty Valeriy
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posted March 23, 2001 10:31 PM |
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Beldarion from Heroes Community
Valera's comments Posted 12-1-2000 01:40
I would like to personally thank Valera for clearing up the confusion surrounding the experience idea. I also like her idea for a unit to gain in speed as it gains levels. This topic is making for some very interesting discussion, and I would like to hear what other people's ideas or views are on the topic, and it would be good if somebody could confirm whether or not the ideas given are probable.
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Valeriy
Mage of the Land
Naughty, Naughty Valeriy
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posted March 23, 2001 10:31 PM |
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sikmar from Heroes Community
A great idea under develop Posted 12-1-2000 09:08
Although individual experience idea was technically feasible, I recognize that stack experience idea is far, far better. I also think Valera has improved a lot the idea of experience delivering based in combat merits (the formula looks very nice).
As Beldarion said, this topic is becoming very interesting and has brought new life to the HOMM4 wishes forum (people is getting tired of suggesting new towns and creatures, and ideas like this seem more creative). I hope that the experience matter will reach 3DO designers, cos it could bring a new dimension of strategy.
I want to say goodbye till next week (I post messages from my office) by proposing a problem we must solve: suppose you have two stacks of, for example, skeletons (necromancer once, necromancer forever) that have been trained by two different heroes. How could we mix them if the first stack has developed on, for example again, speed, and the second on attack skill? It's easy to calculate an average experience quantity, but what about the stats of the resulting stack?
We are the first step in HOMM4 developing process. I know there are some good veterans reading this forum (the legions of Astral Wizard seem more interested in net battling and map rating), so I invite you all to contribute to develop this great idea.
Good fight!
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Valeriy
Mage of the Land
Naughty, Naughty Valeriy
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posted March 23, 2001 10:32 PM |
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valera from Heroes Community
Re: A great idea under develop Posted 12-1-2000 20:38
Hi, continuing on the idea,
The experience of a hero only affects the amount of experience the stack will gain. With a better hero they will effectively gain less experience because their stats are higher. As in that formula, the level of creature will be increased by hero level, so it might be for example: experience level (not points) of creature = creature exp level + hero exp level / 2
2 can be adjusted again. According to the amount of might skill points hero has to the magic skill points.
As for creature levels. At certain amount of experience points, a stack gains a level. Then, for every type of creature a certain level does the same thing (like in LOM I think). Example: skeleton (yay again!) for level one will get:
+1 attack and +1 defence
level two might be:
+1 speed
level three might be:
+1 damage
So, when you have a stack of level 3 skeletons and a stack of level 1 skeletons with respective collective bonuses as shown above, if you merge them and the average exp becomes level 2, then all skeletons there will have abbilities of level 2 skeleton.
That's that
Valeriy.
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Valeriy
Mage of the Land
Naughty, Naughty Valeriy
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posted March 23, 2001 10:32 PM |
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dr_st [guest] from Heroes Community
Re: Creature Stack Experience Posted 12-3-2000 08:14
First of all, to Sikmar:
If indeed each separate creature should have its own experience level, the saved games will be huge, because you will need a lot more than 3 bytes for each creature.
By that method you treat each creature as a separate object, which has to carry all the information: creature type, creature experience, experience needed for next level, creature properties (which are changed with experience, and are not standard anymore), and most important, creature location: where on the map, what hero and where on the battlefield. In that case you will have something like this:
A huge array of creatures, which constantly grows. Let's say that you can have a max of 1 million (that's a lot). Each one will be a dozen bytes or more to hold all the properties. Which means you need a dozen or more megs of RAM to remember all this. Then you have the actual stack, where each stack is an array of pointers to the creatures. 100 creatures - 100 pointers. Each pointer: 4 more bytes. Max number of pointers: million. Do the calculation. If you need 10MB of RAM to store it, you will need 10MB of HD space to save it. You might need a lot more.
Then the calculations of the random creature, whenever a stack is damaged or resized. Computers are fast, but that doesn't mean we should load them with unnecessary work. If you can save a single second - that's a lot.
Now, for Valera's idea: that's more acceptable. You hold experience for each stack space for each hero / castle. Like 2 heroes and 1 castle - will need to hold 21 different values of experience (7 stacks each). Still, if you want flexibility, you will need to store much information (not as much as in the individual experience method), but still much more than is used by the current method. Is it worth it? Not up to me to decide. Let's say the guys at 3DO hear this discussion. They should decide what idea they want to go with, find the most effective way to do this and decide whether it's worth the additional trouble, size, etc.
Being more conservative than most people, I wouldn't go with it, but from what I see many people here like the idea of creature experience instead or in addition to hero experience. That's what feedback for.
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Valeriy
Mage of the Land
Naughty, Naughty Valeriy
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posted March 23, 2001 10:33 PM |
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sikmar from Heroes Community
Discard the idea Posted 12-4-2000 09:02
To dr_st:
I see your point, although there are a lot of combined structures that could allow to store the most amount of data only once (locations, creature type, owner hero, etc could be stored once per stack, not once per creature) and save for each creature only the experience stat. Anyway, I don't wanna keep a sterile discussion about this point because I've discarded the idea. Stack's experience concept seems more feasible.
What about upgrading units for free when they achieve some experience level? It will allow a player with a lack of resorces to get higher units by fighting, as a prize.
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Valeriy
Mage of the Land
Naughty, Naughty Valeriy
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posted March 23, 2001 10:34 PM |
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dr_st from Heroes Community
Nice... Posted 12-5-2000 06:39
Hmm... I like your idea about experience upgrading creatures. But then again: creature upgrades increase their stats (and sometimes make them shooters and add specialties). That's exactly what experience should do. So basically stack experience is a more flexible and extendable alternative to creature upgrades.
Maybe like this:
To simplify the structure and reduce memory and disk usage, the experience levels and the stats they add should be prefixed for each creature type, like the current stats are (otherwise we go back to a complicated structure). Then let's say a Red Dragon above a certain level will change it's look and be called 'Black Dragon'. Kinda like the unit upgrades in Warcraft II, if you remember it, only for each stack.
So basically each stack carries the following info:
* Creature Type
* Number of Creature in Stacks
* Morale, Luck
(these tare the only things that are carried in the current method)
* Stack Experience (what we add)
Aside from that, the stats of the stack are calculated automatically, based on pre-set values. That is what currently is done, only we add experience calculations.
That's not too heavy and I think is quite nice.
What do you think?
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Valeriy
Mage of the Land
Naughty, Naughty Valeriy
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posted March 23, 2001 10:34 PM |
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sikmar from Heroes Community
The value of time Posted 12-5-2000 09:15
Well, it looks like the experience idea has reached a good definition point if we mix up the last suggestions. My hope about this subject is that if you start with a short pack of any creature and fight long and hard putting your best battle knowledge to keep them alive, you must have an additional advantage when you face an enemy hero that simply has more gold and resources.
There's another thing related to this subject that I'd like to improve in HOMM4: the value of time. If you have the adequate resources, you can build up your empire quickly. Maybe some powerful features (city structures, creature super-upgrades, two cities mixed in one as a capitol, although this seems very difficult to make) should be only available with the pass of time.
Focusing on the creatures subject, maybe you can get an extra upgrade only by training them a lot: an upgrade not available in your towns till you have owned them a lot of time. And what about very experienced creatures able to upgrade his less developed parents (Brave Gorgons able to convert Gorgons in Mighty Gorgons, and of course I use one of my preferred creatures for the example)?
The main idea is to give new life to long adventure maps and avoid that sense of "world domination" that you feel when you control a vast empire and your cash reaches a seven digits quantity.
NOTE: If you are interested in this new discussion of long time structures, please post it as a new subject to separate from the experience theme.
Best regards. I'm on vacation this week and will be back (like Terminator) next monday.
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Valeriy
Mage of the Land
Naughty, Naughty Valeriy
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posted March 23, 2001 10:34 PM |
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dr_st from Heroes Community
Re: Posted 12-6-2000 10:29
Yes, I think that if we switch to the new method of stack experience and creature upgrades, then upgrades should no longer be available in towns. However, maybe we can have locations that increase creature experience like they increase hero experience.
About joining stacks of the same units with different experience levels: we can disable this completely, but I don't think it'll be well. If we follow the suggested method of calculating average experience, then say you join a stack of 10 Level 1 Gargoyles with 10 Level 3 Gargoyles - you will receive a stack of 20 Level 2 Gargoyles.
Basically, the game has preset values of how many experience points are required for each level. When stacks are joined, the average experience is calculated, and the level of the creature is adjusted accordingly, with all the stats.
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Valeriy
Mage of the Land
Naughty, Naughty Valeriy
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posted March 23, 2001 10:35 PM |
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DaCount [guest] from Heroes Community
Worked out ?? Posted 12-22-2000 13:06
Well i have to say i like the idea of troops with experience. But i see a lot of things 'left open' like will you be able to mix 'gorgons' and 'mighty gorgons' and just level out the experience (and perhaps making the mighty gorgons normal gorgons ?) And then ofcourse the full path of upgrading needs to be worked out, like how are the experience devided (by kills the stack made, by an average of the overall kill, and what part of experience is then left over for the hero ?). Also what other possibilities should there be for monsters to upgrade ? Should the hillforts be there ? Should experience you gain by those little menhir things be shared with your monsters or should it only go to the here etc. etc. I think i you want such suggestions to make a chance at the developers you'd better come with a whole concept.
Anyway just my 2 cents .
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Valeriy
Mage of the Land
Naughty, Naughty Valeriy
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posted March 23, 2001 10:35 PM |
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wizardboy from Heroes Community
skeletons with experience.. Posted 12-23-2000 13:45
the ideas is great valera but there is a catch. It is all great for all other creatures from other castles to gain experience but probably not the skeletons though.
this is the scenario:
after a hard long battle with your veteran skeletons and suddenly pops couple hundred(or even thousands) of skeletons(due to expert necromancy with lots of artifacts) then your left over sketetons not only have to share their experience with their new friends but also get to decrease their exp dramatically.
And enventually they will be back to where they started from.
i m not trying to be a pessimist but to bring a new light at looking at things....
try to have solving this problem...
but i suppose it is fair anyway because necro heroes can summon skeletons while the others can't, that should even things up!
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