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| Thread: Good and Evil Option |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 · NEXT» |
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Catconfuser
Tavern Dweller
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posted January 08, 2004 09:28 PM |
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Good and Evil Option
I'll just say one thing. In HOMM-games I would like to have an option to make good factions unable to recruit troops in evil castles and locations and vice versa.
I hate it when the zombies of Zluurgan the Demoniac are fighting side by side with the fair high elves.
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Catconfusers, attention!
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Lich_King
Honorable
Supreme Hero
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posted January 08, 2004 09:33 PM |
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Zluurgan ??? 
What is that ?
I disagree... I think that you must be able to hire any creature you want... and there is morale for prevention of mixing the diff aligment creatures and the undead...
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Catconfuser
Tavern Dweller
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posted January 08, 2004 09:52 PM |
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Well, Zluurgan is just some guy... never mind.
I meant as an option. You should be able to play the game normally as well. I just recall playing HOMM II or III (can't remember which) quite a lot during a period some years back and this was the main reason I lost interest.
"Morale prevention" for mixing in the same armies? Have never heard of this. What is it?
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Catconfusers, attention!
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Lich_King
Honorable
Supreme Hero
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posted January 08, 2004 09:57 PM |
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The Morale penalties you get from mixing different Aligment/Town creatures. In both Heroes 3 and 4 you get negative morale when you mix too many troops. Undead and Death creatures lowers the morale too. So with elves and with no artifacts (in Homm3) you should got -1 morale rating. Which later can cause a movement freeze.
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Catconfuser
Tavern Dweller
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posted January 08, 2004 10:04 PM |
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Hm, interesting. I actually wasn't aware of that. Anyway, to me a morale decrease wouldn't be enough. Unicorns would never fight together with orcs or bone dragons in my universe, whatever the morale penalty.
Each to his own, but I would like this as an option and I think it could be easily implemented and would be quite justified.
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Catconfusers, attention!
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Dingo
Responsible
Legendary Hero
God of Dark SPAM
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posted January 09, 2004 05:34 AM |
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I like the morale penalty system better. It makes sense.
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The Above Post/Thread/Idea Is CopyRighted by, The Dingo Corp.
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Polaris
Promising
Known Hero
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posted January 09, 2004 09:39 AM |
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Of course it's always nice to have more options, but imagine if all kinds of options that all kinds of different people wanted were added. The game would be so confusing it would not be as enjoyable.
Now I know that example was blown way out of proportion for your one measly change, but a lot of good features have to be left out of games. Somewhere a line has to be drawn. In this case, I think the designers made the right choice. I personally would never enable the option, in part because I think it disables legitamate strategies (the morale penalty is enough).
I DON'T think it makes since that Unicorns and Zombies would *never* work together. Unicorns may have an animal stubborness against working with the living dead, but I don't envision it to be as strong of a stubborness as human dissent. This is precisely what the morale system models (although for game balance it is not so severe). See what I mean?
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Catconfuser
Tavern Dweller
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posted January 09, 2004 11:26 AM |
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Question: are the morale penalties the same for Castle (men) and Rampart creatures (elves/dwarves) as it is between any of the two and say Necropolis?
In that case the morale system wouldn't make sense at all.
Polaris, I think you are exaggerating with too many options being hard to handle. A lot of games, Master of Orion II for instance, begin with the player making a host of decisions for his alien species and MOOII was one of the most successful games of the 90's.
What's so hard with a button that says "Alignment Restricted Recruitment On/Off"?
What number of options are too many? Thing is an option must have some relevance for a game, so it's not that you would risk open any floodgates here. B-52 bombers or levitating towns for airborne relocation would make no sense and therefore be scrapped by the desgners.
Above all, you would never have to consider an option if you didn't want to. There are default settings after all.
The example with unicorns in undead service, well. One is free to make any kind of extreme example or explanation, but the error is making an extreme occurence into a general rule (which is what the game does).
Also alignment terror/hatred/sympathy for one's own kind goes both ways. Unicorns (who after all are generally considereed magical and intelligent creatures) and dwarves would probably be massacred immedeately by a bunch of orcs and be fortunate to be kept alive as slaves or beasts of burden. Nevermind fighting in their ranks! For a unicorn or woodelf this simply wouldn't apply.
Think about it this way: you have this troop of 60-70 woodelf archers. One day they say, we think we'll go off fighting alongside some zombies because we like the smell of rotten corpses so much and we get to shoot at our friends and relatives on the other side.
No, it just wouldn't happen. Any self respecting elf would commit suicide before serving a lord from an inferno or necropolis.
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Asmodean
Responsible
Supreme Hero
Heroine at the weekend.
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posted January 09, 2004 04:32 PM |
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Hmmm.
I think you're trampling on the elves right to be evil. Who's to say that some shy retiring elfmaild doesn't hold a deep desire to just blast away at all those do-gooders around her with a nice chain lightning spell!
Wouldn't it be so much cooler if, when an evil-aligned hero captures a castle that it becomes 'twisted' say, with evil unicorns or sprites.
Though I'm not sure how that would sit if a knight captured a necromancers castle. Venom Spawn don't seem the most chivalrous of creatures to me.
Does anyone even have a hint as to what creatures will be in the new game?
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To err is human, to arr is pirate.
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Styq
Known Hero
Grandmaster Leadership
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posted January 09, 2004 05:01 PM |
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It could be nice to choose though. Let's say u start with a basic unit, now you can either upgrade it to be good or evil.
EXAMPLE:
Peasent
Upgrade to Malitia (Good)
Upgrade to Bandit (Evil)
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Leadership is nothing but being a good actor,
just like bravery is nothing but being a fool
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Catconfuser
Tavern Dweller
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posted January 09, 2004 05:17 PM |
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Quote:
I think you're trampling on the elves right to be evil. Who's to say that some shy retiring elfmaild doesn't hold a deep desire to just blast away at all those do-gooders around her with a nice chain lightning spell!
- Well, I guess she could since Rampart armies would be perfectly able to attack each other. My suggestion was regarding what creatures you could recruit, based on your start town, not what you could attack. And hey, it was an optional feature.
On the other hand, if you're desperate for some perverted elfmaiden, leading an army of troglodytes and skeletons, it would probably be more appropriate to suggest some special story or event to the game, not setting general conditions!
Quote:
Wouldn't it be so much cooler if, when an evil-aligned hero captures a castle that it becomes 'twisted' say, with evil unicorns or sprites.
Quote:
It could be nice to choose though. Let's say u start with a basic unit, now you can either upgrade it to be good or evil.
EXAMPLE:
Peasent
Upgrade to Malitia (Good)
Upgrade to Bandit (Evil)
- I don't know. It would include a whole lot of extra creatures and design... but maybe, yeah why not?
It would not have to be exact counterparts either, like swordsmen (don't remember what things were called) could be replaced by half-orcs for example, and it could begin low down and work itself up by constructing new buildings etc.
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Catconfusers, attention!
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Asmodean
Responsible
Supreme Hero
Heroine at the weekend.
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posted January 09, 2004 05:59 PM |
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It could potentially be a whole lot better than that.
With the right parameters you could have customisable units, with options that only good and evil can unlock, for example. A good unicorn could cast the blind spell. But an evil unicorn could have the 'impale' ability. Where it could cause extra creature death by 'impaling' them on it's horn. Kinda like the stone ability of the medusas in HOMM4.
These abilities could be chosen at the dwelling in the castle, and once you decide on parameters, then that's the type of creature you recruit from now on. No mixed ability-same type- creatures.
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To err is human, to arr is pirate.
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Elleshar
Tavern Dweller
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posted January 09, 2004 06:09 PM |
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Ever noticed that , sometimes,your armies freeze and lose their turns ? That is because of the low morale..
Did you read the description of "leadership" skill?
Also, it doesn't makes sense not being able to recruit good creatures when your hometown is evil...
First of all, in reality good and evil is relative concepts.. If a dog bites me he is evil but if he scares the wolves away he is good, right? .. So should I kill the dog or feed it?
Or you stopped by a map with the scenario like the following,
"You, as the mighty king of Neresua, has been betrayed by your own son who wants to invade all of the erathia. Your own guards, heavenly monks, chased you for months .. You had no option left but running to the underground..... Overwhelming number of monks ambushed you somewhere in the underground... One of the monks raised his hands and threw a destructive lightball towards you... There were moments left to your death.. But then something happened.. A thundering voice echoed in the tunnels... A devil showed up, stopped the light, destroyed all of the monks and when you introduced yourself to him he offered you his help for fighting agains the betrayers ! etc etc"...
So, you had a Castle at first , but then all you have is inferno towns.. So you can not play this game because you can not recruit anything?
Besides, why should I lose a single pikemen for capturing a town that I can not use for strengthening my army?...
what you have suggested would kill the game I think..
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Asmodean
Responsible
Supreme Hero
Heroine at the weekend.
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posted January 09, 2004 06:12 PM |
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I'd still love the chance to corrupt a few sprites.....
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To err is human, to arr is pirate.
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Catconfuser
Tavern Dweller
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posted January 09, 2004 06:34 PM |
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Quote:
I'd still love the chance to corrupt a few sprites.....
Yeah, who wouldn't... (man, I don't have a life! )?
Elleshar, please read the thread!
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Catconfusers, attention!
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Djive
Honorable
Supreme Hero
Zapper of Toads
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posted January 09, 2004 09:20 PM |
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There are a number of issues to consider.
First of all there is currently no such thing as player alignment in Heroes.
- A player doesn't necessary have a Home Town.
- A player or AI can start with heroes and/or towns of several different alignments.
Thus player alignment doesn't really exist, unless you begin to talk alignment in the AoW2 sense where you count controlled towns and populations and so on and so forth.
What does exist in Heroes is "army alignment" which applies within each individual army.
The questions was asked how Heroes 4 works. It's something like this:
Elementals, undead and machines always have a morale of 0.
An army with only one faction has a base morale of +1.
Then you get penalties as follows (except for Might):
- Undead mixed in with non-Death troops: -2.
- Allied faction mixed in: -1 for each allied faction.
- Might mixed in: -3
- Hostile faction mixed in: -5 for each hostile faction.
For Might troops you get penalties as follows:
- Undead troops in army: -2.
- Non-might troops in army: -3 for each faction.
There is no limits to what you can recruit from town or creature dwellings based based on what a player have in the forms of armies, garrisons, towns, or town sizes, and personally I don't think there should be something restricting this in the general case.
For mapmaking I could perhaps use a function to restrict a certain player from recruiting certain creatures (as well as making any encounters with that crature "savage", but such settings would IMO have to be on a per map basis and for instance Random Maps would have to allow any player to recruit any creature.
The opposite of restricting player from recruiting certain named creatures was in the Heroes 2 game, and was called creature alliances. An alliance then meant that any creature of the specified type encountered would automatically offer to join the player free of charge.
When it comes to game-play the Necropolis have an alignment converter. Put creature into skeleteon undead transformer and voila you have a death aligned creature.
Some of the other towns could have similar abilities an inferno town could have a corrupting structure which changed the alignement of any living creature put into it to "demonic". (changing alignment could cost a certain amount of money, and the same could be considered for the undead transformer, presumably using it is not free of charge.)
Another possibility is to make alignment conversion a Hero special ability, and the undead making could also be a Hero special ability.
When it comes to Hero skill Diplomacy, then in Heroes 4 it didn't work on enemy factions, or on creatures with 0 Morale (or at least most of the creatures with 0 morale.). Not sure about all of them. The restriction applied compared the heroes alignment with the alignment of the trrops the hero dealt with.
The Charm skill (magical persuasion) did work on most of these types of troops though.
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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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Asmodean
Responsible
Supreme Hero
Heroine at the weekend.
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posted January 09, 2004 09:25 PM |
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I like the idea of the 'demonic converter'. Know where I can get one?
Seriously. I think you have the right of it, and I'm envisaging a more D&D type thing where you can choose alignments and stuff like that. I'll just have to hope and pray that theres a new weenie troop called the Dark Sprite!
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To err is human, to arr is pirate.
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Polaris
Promising
Known Hero
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posted January 10, 2004 06:41 AM |
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To Catconfuser,
I know I blew it out of proportion. Look at my post- I even said I did. And to dismiss my logic on unicorns and zombies working together... tsk, tsk... I only did that because you yourself mentioned unicorns shouldn't *ever* be able to work with the dead!
But look at this topic. Look at how the complexity of this simple idea has ballooned into a complicated network of data. That was my point. Besides, toggling this feature would fundamentally change the game- especially if some of these more recent ideas were brought in. I can't think of any options in the previous Heroes games that have such massive reprecussions according to such a minor change (correct me if I'm wrong). Quick combat, maybe, but that has such a great benefit that it's worth the change.
At this point, however, I have more quarrel with the idea being optional than the idea itself. At least, the more modest change used in H4. I am still against it, but it's not so major that I think it's worth arguing over.
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b0rsuk
Promising
Famous Hero
DooM prophet
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posted January 10, 2004 03:39 PM |
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Djive
Honorable
Supreme Hero
Zapper of Toads
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posted January 10, 2004 05:37 PM |
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Quote:
Please define good and evil.
For the purposes of this thread and possibly the game, I'd say these are merely labels to signify that this faction does not get along with that other faction.
The factions in H4 didn't truly have a Good - Evil axis, instead having Might, Life, Order, Death, Chaos and Nature.
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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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