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Heroes Community > Heroes 5 - Temple of Ashan > Thread: Zombies improvements
Thread: Zombies improvements This thread is 6 pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 6 · «PREV / NEXT»
Andmcmuffin2
Andmcmuffin2


Hired Hero
In need of Undead Avatar
posted June 27, 2006 06:20 PM

I agree with alcibiades (sp?) except if they only make ghosts 50% reduction, they need to up health or defense on them- they'd die too fast. I thought of this for ghosts with the 50% reduction:
+2 Defense
+2 Health
When they finish off a STACK of enemy units, the unit strength at the beginning was calculated. Basic necromancy is 5% of original unit strength, Advanced is 10%, Expert is 15%, Ultimate is 20%- amplifiers only have half effectiveness (because it's during battle)
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The wraith is reserved?!?! NOOOO I'M NOT GOING TO BE PINK AND UNDEAD!

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alcibiades
alcibiades


Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
posted June 28, 2006 08:07 AM

The might get a slight health increase, but bear in mind, that with a 50 % damage reduction, that's essentially doubling their Hit Points - even though there is the twist that they will be vulnerable towards spells, and the Bless (Divine Strength) spell will be any Necromancers nemesis.

OT: Do any of you, by the way, find it ridiculous that you can use Bless on your undead units?

Well - back on topic. I'm not sure I understand the last part you are saying - do you consider active Necromancy DURING the battle?

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covert-one
covert-one

Tavern Dweller
posted June 28, 2006 09:22 AM

Alcibiades, I was thinking about different approach to necromancy skill. Why not all living (non magical, non mechanical) creatures have their dead counterpart?

For instance when beating mages why not resurrect their undead counterpart - liches?
Or when beating dragons - bone/spectral dragons?

Human units, like conscripts or archers can be animated as sceletons/sceletons archers, and squires to zombies. Magical one, like sprites to spectres and so on.
Of course there will be creatures, which cannot be animated (like it is now the golems or gargoyles) For instance treants, hydras, golems, giants and griffins (and their upgraded versions) does not have undead counterpart.

I think this will balance the things more with having different units raised as undead instead of just one.
Also the raised units could be unupgraded or upgraded depending on the units in the necromancer's army (to avoid lost units due to lack of space).

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law558
law558


Adventuring Hero
posted June 28, 2006 10:31 AM

Raising bone/spec dragons from other dragons would be realistic, but way too overpowered in my opinion.

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covert-one
covert-one

Tavern Dweller
posted June 28, 2006 11:00 AM

law558 it depends on the raised numbers.

Thats the tricky part. The necromancy skill could be made the way that the higher the creature the less raised as undead.

This can be modified by adding some sort of checkout for the necromancy skill. But the raised units will never go below 1.

Think that you dont fight all the time with dragons, so you cant raise  dragons in huge numbers. Most of the time lev 7 stucks are several to pack, so u will get 1-4 (max). And this is if the necromancy is capped at 25%.

I think the approach I am suggesting for the necromancy skill (to raise the appropriate undead creature of the killed living creature) is realistic and possible but have to be balanced in terms of numbers.
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alcibiades
alcibiades


Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
posted June 28, 2006 07:30 PM

Quote:
Alcibiades, I was thinking about different approach to necromancy skill. Why not all living (non magical, non mechanical) creatures have their dead counterpart?

For instance when beating mages why not resurrect their undead counterpart - liches?
Or when beating dragons - bone/spectral dragons?

Human units, like conscripts or archers can be animated as sceletons/sceletons archers, and squires to zombies. Magical one, like sprites to spectres and so on.
Of course there will be creatures, which cannot be animated (like it is now the golems or gargoyles) For instance treants, hydras, golems, giants and griffins (and their upgraded versions) does not have undead counterpart.

I think this will balance the things more with having different units raised as undead instead of just one.
Also the raised units could be unupgraded or upgraded depending on the units in the necromancer's army (to avoid lost units due to lack of space).




I think this is a really interesting idea!

I like the idea of letting only Humanoid subjects being rased as Skeletons. That makes sense, and would also put a required cap on Skeleton numbers. It would of course offer some balancing problems, because some factions have lots of Humanoid units (Haven!, Sylvan, Dungeon) while others have only few or none (Inferno, Academy and of course Necropolis itself). Interesting possibilities abound - creatures from other planes might be trapped as Spectres (Inferno creatures! and also Djinn and Rakshasa) and the possibility of re-animating destroyed enemy undeads might also be interesting. Also, the idea of making Dragons into Bone/Spectral Dragons is appealing! In fact, it might level out quite well:

Haven > Skeletons - Lots of them!
Sylvan + Dungeon > Skeletons - Some + Bone Dragons (few)
Academy > Skeltons (few) + Spectres (some)
Inferno > Spectres (some)
Necropolis > All undeads (few of each - this might be tweaked through Eternal Servitude!)

Concerning Liches and Vampires: You don't animate a Lich or a Vampire, they are both created, the Vampire by intervention from another Vampire, and the Lich be willing transformation of the subject (I think). That would sort of rule out creating Liches from subjects you attack on the battlefield. Also, I think that would be overpowered, nearly no matter what modifier you put on it, simply because Liches are so powerfull as they are.

I think the idea of Vampires creating Vampires could be followed through. This could either be accomplished by twisting the Life Drain ability, or make it a separate ability only available for Vampire Lords. The latter might be a more interesting option. I think Vampires should be modified, so that they could either choose to attack with the swords for full damage. Alternatively, they could choose to do a Life Drain, which would do less damage - say, half damage - but give the Vampire the same amount of Hit Points. Thirdly, Vampire Lords might have the ability to transform Humanoid subjects into Vampires. Possibly, Vampires could make an attack for 50 % damage like the Life Drain (or even less), and would then transform these Hit Points into new Vampire Lords (or put a 10 % x Vampire Lord numbers limit) (thus increasing stack numbers). I think this would make Vampires in some way a more ballanced unit, because the Life Drain wouldn't work on every attack (and retaliation!) but it would also open for more variation in how to apply this unit during combat.

It's all just speculation, but I would like to see some modification of the Necromancer skill to make the Skeleton less important during combat.

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ZeroXcuses
ZeroXcuses


Known Hero
posted June 29, 2006 02:55 AM

Everything is fine the way that it is. The object of the Necro is to accumulate an obcene amount of lv 1 creatures by the end of the game. It has always been like this.

I don't like the 50% regen of the Vampires, but I have to deal with it. Liches more than make up for any damage deficiencies. They can take out war machines AND units in one shot. Too bad they are four hexes large (unnecessary attire IMO), because I would split them in two stacks.

The mummy in Heroes 2 had curse attack, and that was a lv 3 creature. Putting it on a lv 7 creature is a joke. At least dread knights in Heroes 3 had potential to do double damage AND curse.  
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clin_cavalier
clin_cavalier


Hired Hero
of the Armpit
posted June 29, 2006 06:42 AM
Edited by clin_cavalier at 06:44, 29 Jun 2006.

Quote:
I think raising Liches would be overpowered, because the Lich is the best level 5 unit (or one of them).


Well..if you guys ever played HOMM3 The Shadow of Death expansion there was an artifact called Cloak of the Undead King.
I loved that artifact.. it raises Zombies when you have basic necromacy, Wraiths (flying ones) at advanced level, and Liches at expert level (all of them substitutes raising skeletons). I remember there was a bug when it would raise Power Liches when you don't have space for liches but you have Power Liches stacks. It was a dream coming true...

Anyway, I think zombies should be improved somehow and if not, kick them out of necropolis and let them be neutral creatures. If that's the case, I'd love to have the Death Knights in town as Tier 6 (ghosts level 2 vampire level 3 and so on... but that will need a great stat modification for those creatures)
____________
"Winners don't cheat, and
cheaters don't win." - Brain Age

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Doomforge
Doomforge


Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
posted June 29, 2006 09:06 AM

The cloak of undead king used to be one of the most broken things that ever appeared in a computer game

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alcibiades
alcibiades


Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
posted June 29, 2006 09:14 AM

Certainly so. And it was not a bug, you always raised the upgraded creature if you had no slots in your army for the standard one (that was a fix with one of the expansions). And The Cloak was so ridiculously overpowered that it was funny - once you got it, you started accumulating Liches to an extend that you would have like 2K Liches when you approached end game.

The Necromancy skill of Heroes IV - where you started raising Ghosts and the Vampires - was interesting, but also very much proves this point. Once you started raising Vampires, yu became unstoppable. Even with only 2 Vampires raised from each battle, it was enormous.

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covert-one
covert-one

Tavern Dweller
posted June 29, 2006 09:18 AM

Alcibiades, when i said that liches could be also raised from another fallen creatures i ment only four such creatures:
academy mages/archmages and druids/druids elders and probably liches and shadow matriarchs too. thats only 7 types of creatures from all 84+ creatures!!!

I think that all is about balancing the necromancy skill. Why not include some sort of check, so there will be a possibility to raise high level units.

For instance:
basic necromancy - 5% of dead raised as sceletons and/or 5% to raise the unit as its undead counterpart.
and so on.....

About vamps/vamplords I agree with you that vamps create another vamps by themselves. So in this case there could be included possibility that vamps to convert part of the stack (and therfore increase their numbers).

Of course in my opinion the chances have to be very low so they wont cause balance issues.

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dfortae
dfortae


Known Hero
posted June 29, 2006 05:08 PM

I think a nice "minor" change to zombies would be to make their "attack" special become an aura.  Anything that gets next to the zombies automatically gets their attack and defense reduced by 2 (like the zombie's attack special does).  The longer you STAY by the zombies, the more it lowers it.

The reason I think this would make them more useful is because it's not overpowering, but fast creatures getting by the zombies early in a battle would "suffer" a little.  The LONGER they stay by them the MORE they suffer.  This makes up for their terrible initiative.

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Doomforge
Doomforge


Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
posted June 29, 2006 05:39 PM

covert-one: It would become overpowered anyway via soldier's luck.

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ZombieBunny
ZombieBunny

Tavern Dweller
posted July 15, 2006 01:19 AM

The zombies just need a faster initiative. They are just plain annoying in their current form, when they finaly get to move everything is either dead or on the other side of the battlefield....
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Miru
Miru


Supreme Hero
A leaf in the river of time
posted July 15, 2006 04:54 AM

They dont make very good meat shiels since they're only 1 space, and they're horrible tanks, because the enemy has no insentive to attack they when the could attack something else - anything else.

They could use some ability that make enemies want to ge rid of them ASAP.
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I wish I were employed by a stupendous paragraph, with capitalized English words and expressions.

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dfortae
dfortae


Known Hero
posted July 25, 2006 05:32 PM

Quote:
They dont make very good meat shiels since they're only 1 space, and they're horrible tanks, because the enemy has no insentive to attack they when the could attack something else - anything else.

They could use some ability that make enemies want to ge rid of them ASAP.


I agree.  Horrible meat shields.  Since they ARE so passive, I think they NEED a passive ability.  That's why I mentioned the aura.  Anything next to the zombie would get affected so they would become a better "shield".  They would become a shield passively like the squire does with his shield protection.

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Maurice
Maurice

Hero of Order
Part of the furniture
posted July 25, 2006 06:51 PM
Edited by Maurice at 18:51, 25 Jul 2006.

Since traditional Zombies are hard to take out (blow off their head, an arm and both legs, and they will *still* come crawling for you), I would suggest another approach:

Give Zombies a passive form of resurrection. Every turn they get, a number of killed Zombies are automatically resurrected (you could say the destroyed body parts reassemble them as a new Zombie ). Resurrection randomly puts from zero to a certain maximum amount of Zombies back in the stack. I'd suggest making the maximum depending on the original stacksize, but this needs proper balancing (just to avoid stacks that are so large, you cannot kill them off anymore).

To top it off, even if a Zombie stack is totally destroyed, there could still be a chance that Zombies resurrect again. This makes them useful to block enemy ranged units, once you get them in position .

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maltz
maltz


Adventuring Hero
posted July 25, 2006 06:52 PM
Edited by maltz at 18:53, 25 Jul 2006.

I probably watched too many zombie movies... aren't bitten folks later also turned into zombies?

So how about this: say a zombie stack attacks some unit and killed 10. Then this zombie stack gains 10 in number. Only works for troops that has flesh and blood, though.

This might make zombies great against tier one units as they can kill a lot of them. Makes sense -- peasants are defenseless against them!

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caligno
caligno


Hired Hero
If zombies only had brains
posted July 25, 2006 07:09 PM

Zombie Ability

I think that the zombie stats are decent for its purpose, the zombies are supposed to be slow and relatively weak, and I do agree that their main purpose is to absorb damage along the lines of a tank.

The current problem as many of the previous posters pointed out is that there is no reason for either AI or a human player to attack a zombie because there are many other targets that it would want to attack first. I also agree that an aura ability would suit it well, since it cant attack often an aura would allow it to affect the outcome of a battle without having to attack.  

I am thinking of something along the lines of: All enemies within a 1 tile perimiter of the zombie suffers either -1 initiative or -10% initiative.  Since the zombie is a greusome hideous beast that wants to eat your brains (ok perhaps not HOMM lore but still a common thought), enemies within a proximity of it would be afraid to move/attack. This would only affect living non-mechanical units.

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dfortae
dfortae


Known Hero
posted July 25, 2006 08:30 PM

Quote:
I think that the zombie stats are decent for its purpose, the zombies are supposed to be slow and relatively weak, and I do agree that their main purpose is to absorb damage along the lines of a tank.

The current problem as many of the previous posters pointed out is that there is no reason for either AI or a human player to attack a zombie because there are many other targets that it would want to attack first. I also agree that an aura ability would suit it well, since it cant attack often an aura would allow it to affect the outcome of a battle without having to attack.  

I am thinking of something along the lines of: All enemies within a 1 tile perimiter of the zombie suffers either -1 initiative or -10% initiative.  Since the zombie is a greusome hideous beast that wants to eat your brains (ok perhaps not HOMM lore but still a common thought), enemies within a proximity of it would be afraid to move/attack. This would only affect living non-mechanical units.


Ok, now we're finally getting somewhere.  Yes, that could be a good aura.  KIND of close to the Fright aura (bad morale) of the Nightmares, but not exactly.  It's still better than all other suggestions.

The resurrection would be too much like deep hydra and vampire abilities.

The more I thought about it, the more it should be a damage type aura, some kind of poison.  Kind of like the assassins poison, only it as long as the unit standing 1 tile from it is still standing there when it gets it's TURN, it is affected.

In other words, you have 60 zombie.  An enemy angel moves next to it.  No damage yet.  Time goes by, it's the angel's turn again.  It receives 60 poison damage (bypasses magic immunity like poison), but only affects living creatures (no golems, gargoyles, etc).  Angel moves away to different place on battle field.  Zombies follow, attacking on their turn.  Angel gets it's turn again, takes 60 more damage because zombie is once again standing by it.  Now, angel flies away so zombie can't get near next turn.  Angel's turn comes around again, ZERO damage since outside aura of zombie now.

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