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| Thread: Of Towns, Creature Dwelling building, Upgrades and stuff - Idea (essay) |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 · NEXT» |
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Svetac
Promising
Known Hero
Saintified Paladin
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posted November 10, 2002 04:24 PM |
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Edited By: Svetac on 10 Nov 2002
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Of Towns, Creature Dwelling building, Upgrades and stuff - Idea (essay)
We have seen the very first news about Heroes V. Christian sais that they will bring us the best from the series while adding more things. Also we have learned the the rock-scissors-paper effect will be applied to the towns. And that got me thinking of an idea that I posted here several months ago, and got very positive feedback about it, so I think that now when Heroes V is being designed is the right time to present the idea once again and hope that it may have impact on the NWC’s town designing process.
What is it all about. Well, about the creature building in the towns, creature choices and creature upgrades. Let me start first by analazing the previous heroes games and how they solved this thing there, what was good and what was bad (if you don’t want to read all this analisis, than please jump on “THE IDEA” chapter below, but reading all the stuff will give you better picture what I’m talking about):
Heroes 1 - Start of the series. 4 towns, each with 6 levels of creatures. 5 stacks per army. Several creatures have special powers that make them more distinctive. Playing with each town is fun because of the diversity of the creatures. While Paladin has 50HP, the Dragon has 200HP, but the Dragons are much harder to build and much more expensive to buy, and you get 2 of them per week VS 4 Paladins per week. Playing different town is interensting because it demands different strategy to win. If you’re playing Warlock you must raise enough money to build your top creature and buy all of your creatures, that with the economy of Heroes 1 is hard task. If you play Knight, you can build your top creature pretty fast and buy you whole army much easier, but since the total strenght of your army is much lower than the total strenght of the Warlocks army, you must develop second or third Knight town and develop it up to the Paladins. Each town required different strategy in the developing the creatures and that was great.
Heroes 2 - 2 new towns. 6 towns in total. But not only that. They add upgrades to nearly 40 % of the creatures. And when upgraded they get their special powers. What a great idea! Everybody loves it. It adds spice to the game. You may build the Giant, but when you collect enough money to upgrade him, only than you will get the allpowerful Titan. And the Dragon have even two upgrades. Each town still require different developing strategies.
Heroes 3 - 2 new towns. 8 towns in total. 7 creatures per town. 7 stack per army. Town hall and Fort are introuced here, and the economy is altered. They tried to make the 1st level creatures useful trought the whole game, not only in the start. Great gameplay, but in my opinion there are 2 big mistakes done. The first one - all of the 7th level creatures end up, more or less, with same strenght. Of course that there is difference in the power between Archangels and Hydras, but still the difference is not that big as in H2 (Knight and Titan for example). All the towns now have hard time in building the 7th level, which is leading to a generic race, who will build faster the 7th level creature. Second mistake is that they overdone the upgrades. Now every creature in every town has it’s upgraded version. I like the upgrades, but this is simply overdone.See, while in heroes 2 the Knight town had the option to upgrade all of his levels except for the first, the Sorceress town could’we upgrade it’s 2,3 and 4 levels, and Wizard town 3,4 and 6 levels etc. That was diversity in the upgrades, but in heroes 3 all town ending up with ability to upgrade all of their creatures was simply overdoing the upgrades.
Heroes 4 - Major reworking of the game. 4 levels of creatures. 8 creatures per town, but now we have to make creature choices. Great idea. But when you play the game for some time you will see it’s flaws. And that is, it’s generic once again. All the towns have two 1st level creatures, and all the towns have to made choice when they build their 2nd,3rd and 4th levels of creaures. Plus, all the creature dwellings of the same level in all of the towns cost the same. Archangels, Champions, Hydras, Dragons, Titans - they all cost 14.000gp (if I remember corectly). And that is simply generic. The towns loose their distinctiveness. The good part of Heroes 4 creatures is that they are really distinctive one from each other with their specialties.
THE IDEA:
The idea it’s self is no-brainer, and it works well with the idea of NWC to put in Heroes V the best things from Heroes 1,2,3&4. Well what I will propose here is this: to merge the upgrades and choices of creatures, while keeping the diversity of the towns as in Heroes 2. And also to make 6 total creature levels with creatures really different one from another as in H4. The prices of the same creture dwellings in different towns should be different according to the creature power. And the weekly creature generation should be different among different creatures as in Heroes 2 & 4. To better picture the idea I’ll make few examples of how I imagine the creature building process in the towns to look like:
Knight/Castle/Life:
Hero: Paladin and Cleric
Level 1: Peasant > upg. Militia
Level 2: Archer < or > Gargoyle
Level 3: Halebeirder
Level 4: Monk > upg. Priest
Level 5: Knight can be upgraded either to:
a) Crusader
b) Champion > upg. Pegasus Champion
Level 6: Angel
Total Life creatures: 13
Wizard/Tower/Order:
Hero: Wizard and Lord
Level 1: Halfling < or > Gremlin > upg. Master Gremlin
Level 2: Wild Boar > upg. Gremlin Wild Boar Rider(req. M. Gremlin) < or > Dwarf
Level 3: Iron Golem > upg. Steel Golem
Level 4: Mage > upg. Archmage
Level 5: Naga
Level 6: Giant can be upgraded either to:
a) Titan
b) Colossus
Total Order creatures: 14
Well this examples were just to give you picture of the whole idea, and I hope it’s more clear that way. In my opinion this will work great, and give us balance between the creature upgrades and creature choices while merging them into one great system. I hope you’ll agree with me on this.
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--- Paladin of the Macedon ---
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Darion
Promising
Famous Hero
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posted November 10, 2002 08:37 PM |
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I really like the idea of towns only having certain creatures they can upgrade... i really liked that individuality in Homm2. I did like the idea of having to chose between the creatures in Homm4, but I would like to have the creatures be more equal in terms of use... for example, hardly anyone chooses the Naga because the have Genies, that are just so much more powerful.
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Laelth
Famous Hero
Laelth rhymes with stealth.
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posted November 11, 2002 09:28 AM |
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Personally, I like that the upgrades were eliminated in H4. It makes creature dwellings much more valuable (because you don't have to go through the trouble of upgrading the creatures you buy before they're really useful in your army). You can also have more types of creatures in your army without the upgrade because there's no chance that you'll have one upgraded and one non-upgraded version of the same creature type to clog up your slots.
-Laelth
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Alan P. Taylor, Attorney at Law, LLC
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shaowei
Adventuring Hero
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posted November 12, 2002 10:16 AM |
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I liked upgrades. And if you do not consider heroes in battlefield tedious, then uprading your creatures is not tedious either
They could add hill forts/freeman's foundries etc. on the map so you don't have to go to town each time you want to upgrade.
Also, if they let creatures roam free once again, I do not see a problem with upgrades. I think that upgrades were too much work for those really pedantic people, who cannot have an unupgraded creature if possible. It is a strategic decision, whether to upgrade or not. Let's take a HOMM3 example. You play rampart and have a pegasi building built. You have to fight soon. You have the 5 crystal for the upgrade, and you know that you will be meeting a tower army with master geenies. Now, you can either have more unupgraded pegasi, or less ugraded ones. There is a strategic decision. You will either go first with upgraded pegasi, or or will have more firepower with unupgraded ones.
These tactical decisions are eliminated together with upgrades. Of course, not every troop has to be upgraded, because it gets too "uniform". The HOMM2 way was very good, and I think that lead to more differentiation of castles. Two dragon upgrades! All of those species had different possible tactics (ressurect the red dragons, armageddon with blacks, or rush with greens if warrior hero). Or take the vampire to vampire lord upgrade. I do not think that should be available from the start. There is no sense of achievement if you have titans at once after building the cloud castle.
So definitely, although many players are glad with the disappearance of upgrades, I think they should come back in HOMM5 - but not for every creature.
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hobgoblin
Known Hero
captain hobgoblin
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posted November 14, 2002 06:39 PM |
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I agree with both Darion and Svetac.
First, I really liked the idea of HOMM3 to try to make L1 creatures usefull during all the games. In HOMM4, there are really too few L1 creatures.
I made some aproximative calculations based on black dragon, compared to a L1 creatures that have 10 HP, 1/3 damage, 10 defense and 10 attack (this creature doesn't exist but it looks like the average skills of the l1s in H4.
A black dragon has 400 HP and 40 defense, so on the defensive side, the black dragon is 4*40 times better than my L1.
The dragon has 55/110 damage and 40 attack, so it's approximatively 160 times better on teh offensive side too.
When you add to it the speed, that cannot be multiplied by the number, (I don't take matter of the special ability here), you can estimate that the black dragon is more than 200 times better than a L1 creature.
You have 1 dragon per week, so you should have more than 200 L1 creatures per week.
Of course no, because there are many details that I didn't analyse, in particular that the fact of having somuch creatures in you army would be too enormous, and charmless, I find. But it's just to say that 20 L1 creatures (it was somewhat the average) per week is definitively too few.
Other things :
For the upgrades, I agree with Shaowei that it should be a strategic choice. But too often it isn't. In H3, I generally didn't make the choice and ran to upgrades as soon as I could.
For that, the system of upgrades should be well thought, for example:
would it be a good thing that most creatures get their special ability by being upgraded?
Should there only be a difference of speed between upgraded and non-upgraded creatures?
...
This ideas could be not generalized to every upgradable creatures, but every upgradable creature should have an interest to not be upgraded:
in certain cases it should have no special ability in unupgraded version, but wouldn't be less powerfull, or just a very little,
on other cases, it should be much less powerfull, but would already have its special ability,
...
There are two points you didn't discuss in your post, Svetac:
1. in heroes 2 when you bought an unupgraded creature and then upgraded it, you had to pay twice the difference between the two prices, and it was nomore the case in H3.
2. in AB, there was an inovation: you could build the upgrading building and still recruit unupgraded creatures.
For the first point, I first liked it, because I found it was another strategic choice, to recruit or not your creatures before buying the upgrade, (and, as I am very attached to heroes 2, i find it a certain charm), but now, I think it totaly discourages you to buy unupgraded creatures, and it almost forces you to run to upgrade.
For the second point, I just find it's a good idea and it should be in H5 if the upgrades are back.
Another thing I've thought, it's not an important choice, but it is what made me appreciate the no-upgrade system:
with no-upgrades, you always have creatures with simple names, and, even if 3do tried to find nice names for upgraded creatures, it was always annoying to precise whetehr you were talking of upgraded or non-upgraded creatures. And, not everybody can have noticed this point, the names are often not very good with translations.
Hmmm, is there an other point that I wnated to discuss... no, i think I've said all, apart that I wouldn't like gargoyls in the life castle, but it's another subject.
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Take me down to a pardise city where the girls are green and the grass is pretty
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Djive
Honorable
Supreme Hero
Zapper of Toads
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posted November 14, 2002 11:54 PM |
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Svetac:
I like some of the suggestions but not all of them.
First I believe they should get rid of levels. At least when it comes to the town's relation to a creature. (It may be necessary to give cretures a level base on their XP worth, but that is another matter.)
In H4 i would like about 9-10 creature dwellings per town. The total amount of XP produced by a fully built town is roughly the same between the towns, but beyond that the towns are very different.
It could for instance be possible that one of the buildings that produces the most XP produces Elfs. But instead of the six elves the level 2 makes in H4 Preserve, you could perhaps get 40 elves per week. It could also be the other way. A Phoenix dwelling could instead of producing 2 Phoenixes per week, give only one.
Of the 9-10 dwellings I would like 2 of them to offer alternative creatures of the same race.
A few examples of this:
A choice between Ogre magi (h3 and h4 style) and Ogre warlord (H2 style).
A choice between a Spellcasting Lich and one which has a ranged attack.
A choice between a muscual brutish troll (please make them look stronger!) and the War Troll in H2 which had a ranged attack.
A choice between a spellcasting Monk and a Monk with a ranged attack.
A choice between a spellcasting Elf and the common elf with ranged attack.
Other possibilities includes Genies and magis which could come in different versions with different spells in their spellbooks.
Beyond the restriction that you have to make a pick for the two dwellings that offers the same type of creature (but with different training) the player would be able to build all creature dwellings.
Hobgoblin:
The usefulness between the levels (taking account the population) is a factor 2 per level in H4. So a level 4 dwelling will produce 2x the amount of XP as a level 3, 4x the amount of XP as a level 2, and 8 times as much XP as a level 1. So comparing level 1s with the blackie you should be about even if you multiply the weekly growth of a level 1 and multiply by 8. My guess is that the Blackie will still be slightly stronger but not by much.
For hard to build dwellings you need to make the XP growth higher because they will not start to produce creatures from the start of the game. (And if a level 1 produced 200 creatures per week then perhaps you should ask yourself... Is it not better to recruit the level 1s and safe 14.000 Gold by not building the dragon dwelling.
The difference between the levels are abit too big, but you need to keep a fair distance so dwellings that are built late will catch up.
As for upgrades:
I'm for them as long as it doesn't imply new animations, otherwise I'm against them. If they did as in H4 by changing some of the colours in the creatures it would be Ok.
I also like the idea of building a structure in a city, and you get the choice to globally upgrade the creature without having to take them to that particular city. The downer would be is that if you at the end of any of your turns have lost control of all towns with the upgraded dwelling, then your creatures are downgraded. (And you have to pay for the upgrade again). All recruitments made will imply a choice of getting unupgraded or upgraded creatures.
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"A brilliant light can either illuminate or blind. How will you know which until you open your eyes?"
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Svetac
Promising
Known Hero
Saintified Paladin
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posted November 16, 2002 06:17 AM |
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Edited By: Svetac on 16 Nov 2002
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Hobgoblin:
I think that there should be fee when you upgrade your previously bought unupgraded creatures, but not as high as in H2. Some sibolic fee perhaps.
Djive:
Yes, when I speak of the upgrades, I am thinking of using one and same model in order to cut down the production time. In few cases there might be small additions to the basic models, but nothing big.
Shaowei:
Yes, structures like the Foundry, Battle Academy etc. from H2 can make the things a little bit easier and more interesting.
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--- Paladin of the Macedon ---
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Darion
Promising
Famous Hero
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posted November 16, 2002 07:43 PM |
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Hmmm... what about for level 1 creatures, if after you build the highest level dwelling, you have the opportunity to make them slightly better by giving them a spellcasting ability?
For example, let's take the umm... the Castle for instance, in Homm 4. You have your squires, with their maces. What if, after you get Archangels, they have the ability to teach your squires "bless" ? I know it's kind of a foggy idea, as I just came up with it, but do you think that would improve level 1 creatures' usefulness? Do you think it makes them too strong?
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Lich_King
Honorable
Supreme Hero
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posted November 17, 2002 03:32 PM |
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Well, I realy like Djive's idea !!!
Me thinks It would be intersting to build basic creature like skeleton, then upgrade it in two or more ways. Example:
Necropolis/Death:
1.Skeleton. Upg. Skeleton Warrior/ or / Skeleton Archer.
2.Zombie. Upg. Corpseater/ or / Vile Zombie.
3.Wight. Upg. Wraith/ or / Ghost.
4.Vampire. Upg. Vampire Lord/ or / Nosferatu.
5.Lich. Upg. Power Lich/ or / Lich King.
6.Death Knight. Upg. Dread Knight/ or / Dark Champion.
7.Bone Dragon. Upg. Ghost Dragon/ or / Specter Dragon.
All these creatures has "Undead" skill.
Skeleton: melee,skeletal.
Skeleton Warrior: Melee,skeletal,stenght;
Skeleton Archer: Ranged,skeletal;
Zombie: melee,toughness.
Corpseater: Melee,toughness,eats and spits corpses;
Vile Zombie: Melee,toughness,poisonous attack;
Wight: Melee,flyer.
Wraith: Melee,flyer,drain mana,regeneration;
Ghost: Melee,flyer,insubstantial,aging;
Vampire: Melee,flyer,no retelation.
Vampire Lord: Melee,flyer,no retelation,life drain;
Nosferatu: Melee,flyer,no retelation,raises Vampires with his melee attack (simillar to Life Drain);
Lich: Melee,skeletal,first strike.
Power Lich: Ranged,skeletal,death clound attack (same as area attack, but to living creatures),first strike;
Lich King: Melee,skeletal,first strike,spellcaster (Mass Sorrow,Death Call,Plague, Lightning, Mass Curse);
Death Knight: Melee,regeneration.
Dread Knight: Melee,regeneration,death blow (chance double damage),curse;
Dark Champion: Melee,regeneration,jousting,spellcaster (Terror);
Bone Dragon: Melee,flyer,skeletal,Panic.
Ghost Dragon: Melee,skeletal,flyer,panic,aging;
Specter Dragon: Melee,skeletal,flyer,insubstantial,chance of Life drain.
Well, should I continue... ?
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Svetac
Promising
Known Hero
Saintified Paladin
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posted November 18, 2002 12:12 AM |
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Lich King, i proposed that there should be branching of the upgrades in some cases. See the Knight example in my 1st post. But giving each creature level, two upgrade choices as you suggested can become superfluos, just like the upgrades in H3, and the creature choices in H4.
I think that we need balance of these three things.
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--- Paladin of the Macedon ---
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Gnolly-guy
Adventuring Hero
Storm Gnoll
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posted November 18, 2002 09:11 AM |
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This is a good idea, although upgrading should be left out altogether.In heroes 3 the upgrades seemed to only make them look better with only a few changes in stats.
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I am back with a new & more incredible power as the storm gnoll-Sta-Puff, the marshmallow man!
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hobgoblin
Known Hero
captain hobgoblin
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posted November 20, 2002 06:12 PM |
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Djive:
For level 1, it's what I meant. Even if our numbers are not exactly the same, it demonstrates that, even with the growth, l1 are way weaker than l4. I totally agree taht it's normal that they are weaker, but I just want a little better growth for them than in H4.
For the elimination of levels, I don't really agree. I find that levels give a kind of specificity to heroes. It's somewhat like was the week, it was the specific charm of heroes. I'm not somuch attached to levels, but I would be kinda sad to see the specificities of heroes all disappearing. (hmm, and the heroes out of battlefield were another big one that disappeared in H4.)
Darion:
YOur idea is not bad, but it doesn't really resolve the problem of number. Because it doesn't give you the possibility to rebuild a l1 stack, quite efficient in combat, it just acts on the fact that having some l1 in your armee can be usefull.
But when I say L1, I also find that there should be a little more L2 and mybe L3. Just that L1 is the biggest problem of them all.
Lich_king:
happy to see that you prefer the totally undead necropolis.
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Take me down to a pardise city where the girls are green and the grass is pretty
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Lich_King
Honorable
Supreme Hero
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posted November 20, 2002 10:54 PM |
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Quote:
two upgrade choices as you suggested can become superfluos, just like the upgrades in H3, and the creature choices in H4.
Must disagree with you...
Unique buildings is not very interesting idea...
I prefer my variant better, besides I wasn't true fan of Hmm2 anyway.
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Svetac
Promising
Known Hero
Saintified Paladin
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posted November 21, 2002 03:23 AM |
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Quote:
Unique buildings is not very interesting idea...
I prefer my variant better
I think that I don't get you here?
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--- Paladin of the Macedon ---
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Lich_King
Honorable
Supreme Hero
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posted November 21, 2002 11:09 AM |
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Quote:
Quote:
Unique buildings is not very interesting idea...
I prefer my variant better
I think that I don't get you here?
You haven't read my last lines:
Quote:
besides I wasn't true fan of Hmm2 anyway
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Djive
Honorable
Supreme Hero
Zapper of Toads
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posted November 21, 2002 07:17 PM |
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Lich king: Svetac is saying that it's just too many creatures and too many upgrades to keep track of if every creature in every town is to have two upgrades / alternatives.
Therefore he restricted himself to say 1 or 2 of the creatures in each town to have upgrades / alternatives.
The more creatures you have the worse the quality of the animations. One of the reasons I want the battle-field to stay 2D with isometric view and squares in the hex-grid is that if they reuse the graphic engine then they could resuse dozens of animations both for Heroes and creatures from h4 to h5. (Sure several of them needs to be improved and enhanced but there are still many of them which could be used.) If they don't then they are on square one and I'd be surprised if we get more animations than in H4. (The developement time is a lot less between h4 and h5 than it was between h3 and h4).
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"A brilliant light can either illuminate or blind. How will you know which until you open your eyes?"
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Celfious
Promising
Legendary Hero
From earth
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posted November 21, 2002 07:50 PM |
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Djive, and Svetac are onto something, but I like all the idea's mentioned above.
With all that's said, I need to bring this up.
If there were alternative upgrade's, getting towns already built up could be worthless unlsee you can rebuild to the other alternative.
For example. Peasant's from labor fields can be upgraded to archer's, or pikeman. You made archer training ground's in your town. When you take an opponent's town he made his upgrade for pikeman.
We should beable to deconstruct that, and make the archer training grounds, It is realistic aswell. (minus in reality we could make everything)
Also: Why not make creature dwelling's upgradeable?
I want to see upgrades again, and lichkings idea is good.
If there's ever a reason why a multiple upgrade is unreal, then think it over and try to make it work for that type of creature. If it dosnt seem to work out, have only one upgrade, or none.
Level one creature: Bat's.. What could these be upgraded to? Nothing so no upgrades for this creature.
Level 2 creature: pixies. Upgradeable to fast no retal sprite's, or magic casting faries.
You get the point then.
Keep it up Djive, ect this is all interesting
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What are you up to
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hobgoblin
Known Hero
captain hobgoblin
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posted November 22, 2002 04:59 PM |
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Hmm, I don't think it's necessary to be able to downgrade then reupgrade a dwelling, atleast if the alternative of AB still exist: recruit the unupgraded creature even if the upgraded dwelling is built.
Look at H', if you have a haven, you build the balista dwelling, then you take a haven form your opponent who built the dwelling for mikemen, you can't downgrade it then reupgrade.
For your idea a realism for upgrades, why not, it's a good idea.
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Take me down to a pardise city where the girls are green and the grass is pretty
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Djive
Honorable
Supreme Hero
Zapper of Toads
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posted November 22, 2002 06:42 PM |
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The point with alternatives is that you have to choose, and you are not supposed to be able to downgrade.
I very much prefer to have upgrade bonuses global, meaning you can upgrade everywhere on the map as long as you have one dwelling with that upgrade in a town you control. If you lose control of that dwelling all your upgraded creatures gets downgraded automatically (sooner or later).
So in your example you could upgrade any peasant to either archer or pikeman in any army without visiting ny town. (And thus you would have no need to deconstruct the pikeman upgrade.)
If you want to get a certain upgrade then you have to build for it yourself.
There's nothing wrong with multile upgrades but too many upgrades in the system easily becomes tiresome and players always ends up wanting to mix upgraded and unupgraded creatures.
The way I see it you don't need "upgraded creature dwellings". If you have the upgraded dwelling in any town then you could recruit upgraded creatures directly from the dwelling.
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"A brilliant light can either illuminate or blind. How will you know which until you open your eyes?"
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hobgoblin
Known Hero
captain hobgoblin
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posted November 25, 2002 05:59 PM |
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Quote:
The point with alternatives is that you have to choose, and you are not supposed to be able to downgrade.
I very much prefer to have upgrade bonuses global, meaning you can upgrade everywhere on the map as long as you have one dwelling with that upgrade in a town you control. If you lose control of that dwelling all your upgraded creatures gets downgraded automatically (sooner or later).
So in your example you could upgrade any peasant to either archer or pikeman in any army without visiting ny town. (And thus you would have no need to deconstruct the pikeman upgrade.)
If you want to get a certain upgrade then you have to build for it yourself.
There's nothing wrong with multile upgrades but too many upgrades in the system easily becomes tiresome and players always ends up wanting to mix upgraded and unupgraded creatures.
The way I see it you don't need "upgraded creature dwellings". If you have the upgraded dwelling in any town then you could recruit upgraded creatures directly from the dwelling.
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This time I really don't agree with you. For me, heroes is not only a game of combat, it's also a game of aventure and travel. I don't like the possibility to do everything out of your castle. Sonn, you'll be able to recruit creatures, bring them everywhere on the map with a caravan, upgrade them where you want when you want. Ok the micromanagement in heroes until h3 was a little toomuch, but it's not a reason to go to the other extremity.
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Take me down to a pardise city where the girls are green and the grass is pretty
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