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vladpopescu79
Promising
Famous Hero
a vampire of taste
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posted November 20, 2001 12:24 AM |
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Monster Stacks
Always on the map of heroes we deal with "representations" of different things:
- your army = a hero on horse;
- monster packs = the dominant monster;
- your fleet = a boat,
etc.
I see here an alternative:
THE MONSTER PACKS:
Instead of one single monster, they could place several monster (even different ones if the pack has multiple types of creatures) e.g.:
- few orcs - 1 orc
- several orcs - 2 orcs
- pack of orcs - 3 orcs
- lots of orcs - 4 orcs
and so on, also,
- pack of orcs with few wolves: 3 orcs + 1 wolf
Well, you got the idea.It would show you instantly what you're dealing with, it would be harder to pass them, it would be more realistic as image and touch.
YOUR FLEET:
Same goes for the ships: each ship can carry a fixed number of creatures, lets say 200. For more troops you'll have on the map more ships; they will move together, not independently. It also makes a difference when you build ships at the harbour, because you'll have to pay more gold and wood for a larger army, not 1000 + 10 woods, no matter if you carry a skeleton or lots of behemots. Seems fair to me.
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MANE, TEKEL, FARES
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Murphy
Disgraceful
Famous Hero
banned
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posted November 20, 2001 01:16 AM |
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that sounds good, but what happens when you have 10000+ skeletons? that would be too graphics- extensive, also, it wont fit into most areas...
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Zilpheg
Known Hero
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posted November 20, 2001 04:26 PM |
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I think...
I think he means it will still be a representation, but a better one. you know how a few is about 3... a pack about 15... lots about 30-50... a throng 70-200... a legion about 300-500 and zounds... 500+ (I skipped a few). Anyway, what he meant was each different name would add one more on the adventure map and not the same on the battle map. On the battle map it will be the same as always as a stated above.
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Djive
Honorable
Supreme Hero
Zapper of Toads
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posted November 20, 2001 05:31 PM |
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I'm not sure exactly where you want this repesentation to appear. I'm assuming you want it on the adventure map, correct?
If you are suggesting that every monster army should be customizeable to include different types of monsters I believe you'll get this feature, or at least I hope so.
However, when it comes to the graphical representation on the adventure map of a hero-less army I believe you'll see the most powerful monster in the army, and this is how I believe they should appear on the map. (It would be very strange if the army started to occupy several terrain tiles on the map. Also this would give the player information which I believe the player shouldn't have per default.)
On the other hand if you click on the monster stack, you could get more information. How much information you get would be dependent on many things.
Since you can see the creature stack it's inside the visible range from an army, town, or location you've flagged. The details of the information you get could be limited by what the sources who actually see the stack see.
If the army is within sight of a town, you'd get a great deal of information. If it's viewed by a hero with scouting you'll also get a great deal of informatio, and the same would apply if you cast spells like visions with the army in range.
However, if you have a single halfling scout or a flagged mine as the only things capable to see the army, you would get very limited information. Remember that FoW could even make the full army invisible in some cases.
If you meant the graphical representation visible when you click on the army, there are several levels of information you could get.
1. No additional info. (Meaning you're only aware of the most powerful monster in the stack.)
2. The different types of monsters in the stack. (no numbers)
3. The different types of monsters each with a group size. (Few, Several, etcetera)
4. The different types of monsters and the exact numbers of each monster.
In Heroes 3, if you attack an army of wandering monsters then these will actually split up in smaller stack, and how many stacks will face you will depend on the make-up of your own army. This is something I believe they could keep in heroes 4.
The tactics skill could allow the player to split stacks in a similar way as a pre-combat effect. That is you get a message that you're under attack and gets the option to rearrange the sizes of the stacks in your army. (The skill would also allow you to view the specifics of the army attacking you before rearranging stacks.)
Armies of monsters with only one monster in them could also have this ability. (Whether they're wandering or played by CPU/human.)
Armies for CPU-players would follow the same rules as a human player.
For the fleet.
Well, it makes sense but what I would most of all want to see for ships is that they make embark/disembark times dependent on army size.
It doesn't take a full day for 5 heroes and 10 Black Dragons to board a ship, but trying to put a swarm of crossbowmen on a ship, and it would take the better part of a day.
The negative thing with your proposal is that you're limited to 7 armies. Your proposal would severly hamper troop transports over water, adding to the penalties that already exists. Still it may be viable if they made some major changes in how sea-travel is conducted.
One thing about the troops. Flyers would need to be exempted from the number, since they'd likely be flying over the ship most of the time anyway.
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Dajek
Known Hero
Psychedelic Knight
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posted November 20, 2001 09:00 PM |
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Damn! We have about 3 external threads about boats (check out thread: Some good ideas... by Mathhy) and You still talk about them here...
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vladpopescu79
Promising
Famous Hero
a vampire of taste
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posted November 20, 2001 10:07 PM |
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What I meant with the representation refered only to how they will appear on the adventure map.Instead of a creature that defends a mine there will be more of them.It doesn't influence really the strategy, but the image. Well, if you consider that more creature will ocupy more room on the map, it will be harder to get past them.
And for the ships, all of the ships will carry only one army,as a fleet, so it won't influence how many armies you have.
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MANE, TEKEL, FARES
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Djive
Honorable
Supreme Hero
Zapper of Toads
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posted November 21, 2001 01:42 AM |
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But in that case, wouldn't you want the wandering creatures to have a configurable "attack radius" instead so they attack anything which comes within X tiles?
Otherwise, if the army appears as separate monsters the player would have to believe that the monsters constitutes different armies, and not one combined army. (If the monsters appears as separate armies, the player should safely be able to assume that they are separate armies.)
I'm afraid I still don't see the gain of the suggested feature. What you are suggesting should preferrably give some new tool for the mapmakers, but I can't see the benefit. Can you explain what new feature you add which cannot be obtained in other ways?
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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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vladpopescu79
Promising
Famous Hero
a vampire of taste
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posted November 21, 2001 11:42 PM |
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As you said, it doesn't really aid to the tactics of the game, but rather to the image.From the screenshots of the adventure map, the creatures are quite small, so more of them would look better, and will give you at one glance the informations: you won't have to right-click here and there to see how many of them they are...
And yes, it would be a new tool for the map-maker, because they will have to appear not as separate monsters, but crowded monsters, a kind of formation...I really think it would be cooler to see few champions guarding an artifact rather than a lonely and sad one...
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MANE, TEKEL, FARES
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Svetac
Promising
Known Hero
Saintified Paladin
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posted November 26, 2001 04:25 AM |
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I like the idea. It will add spice to the look of the game. And you won't right-click anymore on the creature stacks to check how many of them are there.
The problem I see with this is the following:
In that case the pictures of this stacks on the map screen must be smaller. Imagin this. The map creator set up a wandering monster stack consisted of:
lots wolves, pack unicorns, several Angels, Horde Hydras, Horde Crusaders.
Now the stack appearance on the map screen should be:
4 wolves, 3 unicorns, 2 angels, 6 hydras, 6 crusaders.
Put such stack to defend passage that's only one field wide and surrounded by rocks and mountains. And than count how bigh all these creature pictures can be on that one field.
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--- Paladin of the Macedon ---
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vladpopescu79
Promising
Famous Hero
a vampire of taste
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posted November 27, 2001 12:20 AM |
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"In that case the pictures of this stacks on the map screen must be smaller. Imagin this. The map creator set up a wandering monster stack consisted of:
lots wolves, pack unicorns, several Angels, Horde Hydras, Horde Crusaders.
Now the stack appearance on the map screen should be:
4 wolves, 3 unicorns, 2 angels, 6 hydras, 6 crusaders.
Put such stack to defend passage that's only one field wide and surrounded by rocks and mountains. And than count how bigh all these creature pictures can be on that one field."
Well, the problem is not as serious as you see it...
First: as I've seen from the screenshots, the monsters are small enough and the free space suficient to place them where they belong.
Second: the army you described hopefully will be only in garissons, or other special places like this, not every objective will have such a guarding army...and really, instead of having a monster guarding a large valley, wouldn't it be nicer to have a whole army filling up that valley?
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MANE, TEKEL, FARES
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Svetac
Promising
Known Hero
Saintified Paladin
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posted November 27, 2001 04:19 AM |
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Quote:
Well, the problem is not as serious as you see it...
First: as I've seen from the screenshots, the monsters are small enough and the free space suficient to place them where they belong.
Second: the army you described hopefully will be only in garissons, or other special places like this, not every objective will have such a guarding army...and really, instead of having a monster guarding a large valley, wouldn't it be nicer to have a whole army filling up that valley?
Let's analyze this just a little bit. But I'll go in inverse order. I'll speculate first on the second part of your post and than come back to the first part.
The army I described will be now common in HOMM4. As Blattner pointed out in the gamespot video interview, and it was also said in some other interviews, now the wandering monster stacks can be, and will be consisted of multiple creature groops. But those will be represented on the map screen with the picture of the most powerful one. So it may happen that if you look in a map guardians that are Crusaders, that there are also Monks, Crossbomans and Squires. You'll get this info if you right-click them. So you can count that this will be problem for the new game.
And now let's go to the first topic of your post. Don't judge the things here by the size of the creaure on the screen. Why? Because no matter the size, they take up one field always. And now imagine multiple creature pictures, like in the example of mine in the previous post, on one field. They gotta be really small in order to fit. Or they could take up several fields on the map to remain in the same drawing proportion, but that will be big deparutre from the current map representation system.
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--- Paladin of the Macedon ---
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vladpopescu79
Promising
Famous Hero
a vampire of taste
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posted November 29, 2001 11:54 PM |
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"So it may happen that if you look in a map guardians that are Crusaders, that there are also Monks, Crossbomans and Squires. You'll get this info if you right-click them. "
Ok, then we could drop the representation of the numbers and simply represent the monsters in the stack: in that case it would be only one crusader, one monk, one squire and so on...the numbers would be available with the right click.
"Because no matter the size, they take up one field always. And now imagine multiple creature pictures, like in the example of mine in the previous post, on one field. They gotta be really small in order to fit. Or they could take up several fields on the map to remain in the same drawing proportion, but that will be big deparutre from the current map representation system."
It's not fair to accomodate a titan in the same spot like a troglodite.The bigger army the larger place they occupy on the map.
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MANE, TEKEL, FARES
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Svetac
Promising
Known Hero
Saintified Paladin
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posted December 03, 2001 01:10 AM |
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This makes perfect sense, and I would like to see it in the game 
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--- Paladin of the Macedon ---
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vladpopescu79
Promising
Famous Hero
a vampire of taste
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posted December 03, 2001 11:28 PM |
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I looked again at some screenshots of the adventure map, and indeed the creatures are too small for the space available to them.Sometime I fail even to notice them, and each time I look again at the picture I discover a new thing about it. And the artifacts are too large, also ( at least the titan cuirase that appears in a screenshots).
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MANE, TEKEL, FARES
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niteshade
Known Hero
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posted December 03, 2001 11:39 PM |
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Well you could just as easily argue that larger armies should take up more space on the battlefield, and that 100 black dragons should not fit in one stack. But while this may be logical, heroes has always been abstract and groups have always only taken up one space no matter how big they are.
Besides the heroes armies only take up one space on the adventure map no matter how many there are, so why shouldn't the neutral armies act the same way? If you want just assume that a space represents a very wide area and can fit as many creatures as you want.
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vladpopescu79
Promising
Famous Hero
a vampire of taste
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posted December 03, 2001 11:55 PM |
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I agreee with you that abstract has an important part in heroes series, but I also believe that as the game evoluates this part of it must shrink. It all started as a game of cards, but it's not the way it should stay.
Moderator's note:This topic has been closed, as it refers to an older version of the game. To discuss Heroes 3, please go to Library Of Enlightenment, to discuss Heroes 4, please go to War Room Of Axeoth.
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MANE, TEKEL, FARES
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