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Heroes Community > Heroes 6 - The New Beginning > Thread: [Project] Heroes VI Community Patch
Thread: [Project] Heroes VI Community Patch This thread is 3 pages long: 1 2 3 · NEXT»
Falconian
Falconian


Adventuring Hero
posted February 17, 2012 12:16 AM bonus applied by alcibiades on 18 Feb 2012.
Edited by Falconian at 17:51, 25 Feb 2012.

[Project] Heroes VI Community Patch



Download

Heroes VI Community Patch 1.0

Version 1.0 Changelog

Healing Balanced.
FACTION-ONLY healing was severely reduced while COMMON healing (spells) was improved.
This way everyone has the roughly the same healing ability (necro/haven still have a bit more than other factions) and those spells are valuable in late game too.

Stronghold Faction changes
- Greatly improved early creeping power in the form of no range penalty for Goblins.
- Fixed the issue where Cyclop's beam would deal low damage: it's now on par with other Champion creatures.
- Centaurs are now more valuable as attackers.

Inferno Faction changes
- Much better creeping due to improved defense & health for Cerberi.
- More health to other creatures to make them on par with other factions.

Necropolis Faction changes
- Dance of Decay deals more damage, making it valuable to switch to Fate Spinner depending on the situation.
- Upgraded Liches and Fates now deal a bit less damage.
- Skeletons have no range penalty; they are now more valuable to use and worth to defend.
- Upgraded Lamatsu have 10 more health.

Sanctuary Faction changes
- The damage of "Leap" has been reduced.

Sylvan Faction changes
- Arcane Archers now ignore 100% of the defense and their attack casts Empowered Meteor Shower with Extra Expert mastery on the target.
Number of meteors depend on the difference between the day of the week, level of the hero, multiplied by the mass of the sun and divided by the number of Battle Hamsters in your army.






How to contribute - READ BEFORE POSTING
Since modding isn't fully enabled yet we have to find smart ways around the modding limits.
Things like modding buildings, creature stats (attack, defense, etc), hero stats, creature growth can't be done, yet we can change creature abilities, faction skills, skills, spells.
Having looked at the code we can mod, what we have should be more than enough to fix most of the imbalances that swarm H6.
So do not suggest things like "give harpies 20 attack" or "make cerberi grow 20 per week", but read the list below and suggest changes to those in order to balance the factions.

Here is the list.


Spells
Renegeration - Mass Regeneration We can mod the amount it heals by percentage, like +50% or -50% of the default value.
Heal - Mass Heal We can mod the amount it heals and the amount it damages by percentage, like +50% or -50% of the default value.
Vampirism - Mass Vampirism We can mod the percentage of damage returned as healing.
Weakness - Mass Weakness We can mod the attack malus percentage.
Ice Armor - Mass Ice Armor We can mod the physical defense value.
Slow - Mass Slow We can mod the initiative malus and the movement malus.
Haste - Mass Haste We can mod the initiative bonus and the movement bonus.
Burning Determination - Mass Burning Determination We can mod the base amount of morale.
Celestial Armor - Mass Celestial Armor We can mod the Defense bonus, the shield percentage and shield's health.
Decay - Mass Decay We can mod the base damage.
Despair - Mass Despair We can mod the base morale reduction.
Inner Fire - Mass Inner Fire We can mod the attack bonus and the initiative bonus.
Stoneskin - Mass Stoneskin We can mod the base damage reduction value.
Chain Lightning We can mod damage, number of targets, and the damage decrease for every target (by default -50% for every consecutive target)
Erosion We can mod damage and number of targets.
Fire Bolt - Ice Bolt - Lightning Bolt We can mod the damage it deals.
Fire Ball We can mod the damage in the center and the outer damage
Meteor Shower We can mod the damage.
Armageddon We can mod the damage to units and damage to buildings.
Earthquake We can mod the damage to buildings.
Wall of Rock We can mod the structure points (health) and duration.
Holy Retribution We can mod the base damage reflection percent and the max damage returned limit.
Necro Purge We can mod the number of tiles of the area it affects.
Circle of Winter We can mod the damage.
Blizzard - Poison Cloud - Living Fire We can mod the area of effect, duration and damage.
Divine Intervention We can mod the heal amount.
Killing Rays We can mod the damage
Ice Wall We can mod the turns of duration and structure points.
Chaos Magic We can mod the trigger chance and reduce percent.
Pain Reflection We can mod the base pecentage of reflection.
Monsoon We can mod the damage and area of effect.
Doom We can mod the amount of charges.
Disruption Ray We can mod the movement and initiative malus.
Curse Of The Netherworld We can mod the amount of damage and healing it does.
Word of Light We can mod the amount of damage and healing it does.


Skills
Meditation We can mod the % of mana.
IrresistibleCalling We can mod the gating efficiency.
Evasive Maneuvers We can mod the damage reduction by percentage.
Giantslayer We can mod the damage bonus by percentage.
Heroism - Mass Heroism We can mod the amount of Morale, Luck and Damage % increase.
Stand your ground - Mass Stand your ground We can mod the defense value.
Focused Fire We can mod the percent.
Eye of the storm We can mod the amount of evaded attacks.
Hour of Judgement We can mod the damage increase bonus.
Might over Magic We can mod the magic damage reduction power by percentage.
Immolation We can mod the percentage.
Parry We can mod the static damage reduction percentage.
Brimstone Rain We can mod the damage and size of the area.
Death is not the end - Fog Veil We can mod the damage.
Tsunami We can mod the amount of charges.


Haven
We can decrease/increase Haven's damage and set the amount of healing tier 4 Sanctuary heals for, along with a few other tweaks.

Faction Skill - Sanctuary 4 We can mod the amount Sactuary 4 heals, by default the power is 20%.
Crossbowman - Marksman By looking at the code I think it's very possible to make their bolts not damage ally targets. I personally think it would take away a good chunk of Haven strategy tho.
Sister - Vestal We can mod heal skill's power for both healing and damaging.
Griffin - Imperial Griffin We can mod minimum and maximum damage for dive and rush dive.
Radiant Glory - Blazing Glory We can possibly remove the self-damage from searing light, or even double/triple it.
Sun Rider - Sun Crusader We can decrease/increase the damage bonus per tile walked.
Seraph - Celestial We can mod Blade of Epiphany/Mercy's heal and damage.


Necropolis
Seems like most people think they have too much healing, well, luckily we can mod pretty much all of their healing abilities.

Faction Skill - Necromancy 1, 2, 3, 4 We can mod the resurrection power of necromancy, and decide what tier of units can be targeted by each level.
Lich - Archlich We can mod the percentage healed by their "channeling" skill.
Ghosts We can mod the heal bonus of their skill.
Fate Spinner - Fate Weaver Dance of decay's damage can be modded.

Stronghold
We can mod some important things that should make Stronghold VERY viable.

Power of the Horde Not sure what this is but it has a moddable value, a percent of 100.
Faction Skill - Rage I should be able to set Rage level 1, 2 and/or 3 to disable retailation.
Goblin - Goblin Hunter Traps' cooldown should be moddable.
Dreamwalker - Dreamreaver We can mod both the friendly version (initiative and movement bonus) and hostile version (damage and movement malus) of their skill. I could even be able to add an healing effect to the skill.
Cyclops - Enraged Cyclops  Brutal blow damage multiplier can be modded. Default is 100% (normal) for brutal blow, 150% for super brutal blow (I guess it's upgraded version's brutal blow).
Cyclop's default eye beam damage can also be modded.

Sanctuary
Not that it requires any fixing imo, but suprisingly only Leap / upgraded Leap can be modded and nothing else.

Kappa - Kappa Shoya Leap: we can mod the bonus damage per distance (decrease or increase)

Inferno
A lot of stuff can be modded here!

Gating 1 We can mod the % of gated unit (default 25%), the turns it takes (default 1)
Gating 2 We can mod the % of gated unit (default 50%), the turns it takes (default 1)
Gating 3 We can mod the % of gated unit (default 75%), the turns it takes (default 1)
Gating 4 We can mod the % of gated unit (default 100%), the turns it takes (default 0)
Building: Rain of Fire Not sure what it is, but its damage can be modded.
Exploding Spikes We can mod the damage. (default 1.0, so we can mod by percentage)
Boundless hate We can mod the damage, default is 15.
Blind Charge We can mod the damage, default is 1.
Wake Of Chaos: Swallow Not sure what it is, but we can mod the amount of turns, I guess it's the duration.
Manastealer We can mod the percentage of mana.
Abyss Gate We can mod the amount of healing (default 100), and the delay (default 3).
Taste of Pain We can mod the damage / damage bonus.
Cerberi We can mod their defense, health, give them no retailation, make them fly and shoot triple beams from their eyes. Nope, not moddable sadly Hopefully the rest is enough to suck this up.



That's all, you have the power now.
We discuss -> We decide -> I code -> You test -> We balance H6!

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seingeist
seingeist


Promising
Adventuring Hero
posted February 17, 2012 10:42 AM

Wow, this is truly excellent work.

I really appreciate (and I'm sure I speak for many others here) that you have laid out everything that you have control over.  This is already an extremely impressive effort.  

As I am able to play more (it would help if the Conflux didn't keep going down during my free time), I will experiment more widely with the skills, spells, and faction abilities to get a better idea of how they might counterbalance certain statistical weaknesses.  

Looking at the Inferno skills, it's a bit challenging to recommend something; most of the skills listed there are not what is weak about the Inferno.  Certainly, they could be buffed up to OP levels in order to counterbalance other Inferno weaknesses, but that's generally a much more difficult way to balance with precision than augmenting weaknesses.  

In any case, as I see it, Manastealer could definitely stand to be increased to 7.5% or 10% to make the Breeders more useful.  

Boundless Hate is not very useful in its current form and it could also use a buff - base 20 or 25 maybe?  

IMO, the Tormentors already do pretty good damage, so buffing Exploding Spikes and Taste of Pain might be a bit overkill.  If anything, they would need to be pretty conservative buffs, like setting Exploding Spikes at 1.2 (which would make it go from +25% damage to +30% damage) and Taste of Pain at 20% per hit instead of 15%

Gating is the toughest one to figure out.  It's biggest problem is its being rather lousy early game, but it gets pretty good late-game once the Luck triggers start firing more.  Since turns can be modified, is it possible to do half turns?  Or is it just 0 or 1?  
Possibly Gating could look something like:

Gating 1 - 33% creatures, .5 or 1 turn
Gating 2 - 66% creatures, .5 or 1 turn
Gating 3 - 77% creatures, 0 turns
Gating 4 - 100% cratures, 0 turns

Finally, the base Luck portion of Mass Heroism could be increased by 5 or more make early-game Luck triggering a bit easier.  

I haven't played enough with Necropolis to make informed nerfing suggestions (or Stronghold for buffing), but Necromancy clearly needs a nerf.  

Anyway, I hope a lot of people jump in here and make suggestions; these are simply my rather limited thoughts.

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Falconian
Falconian


Adventuring Hero
posted February 17, 2012 03:35 PM

Quote:
Wow, this is truly excellent work.

I really appreciate (and I'm sure I speak for many others here) that you have laid out everything that you have control over.  This is already an extremely impressive effort.  

As I am able to play more (it would help if the Conflux didn't keep going down during my free time), I will experiment more widely with the skills, spells, and faction abilities to get a better idea of how they might counterbalance certain statistical weaknesses.


Thanks, I just want to get this done for everyone so we can go to the next step hopefully.
I think H6 is a great game fundamentally, it just needs to be tweaked.
 
Quote:
Looking at the Inferno skills, it's a bit challenging to recommend something; most of the skills listed there are not what is weak about the Inferno.  Certainly, they could be buffed up to OP levels in order to counterbalance other Inferno weaknesses, but that's generally a much more difficult way to balance with precision than augmenting weaknesses.  

In any case, as I see it, Manastealer could definitely stand to be increased to 7.5% or 10% to make the Breeders more useful.  

Boundless Hate is not very useful in its current form and it could also use a buff - base 20 or 25 maybe?  

IMO, the Tormentors already do pretty good damage, so buffing Exploding Spikes and Taste of Pain might be a bit overkill.  If anything, they would need to be pretty conservative buffs, like setting Exploding Spikes at 1.2 (which would make it go from +25% damage to +30% damage) and Taste of Pain at 20% per hit instead of 15%

Gating is the toughest one to figure out.  It's biggest problem is its being rather lousy early game, but it gets pretty good late-game once the Luck triggers start firing more.  Since turns can be modified, is it possible to do half turns?  Or is it just 0 or 1?  
Possibly Gating could look something like:

Gating 1 - 33% creatures, .5 or 1 turn
Gating 2 - 66% creatures, .5 or 1 turn
Gating 3 - 77% creatures, 0 turns
Gating 4 - 100% cratures, 0 turns

Finally, the base Luck portion of Mass Heroism could be increased by 5 or more make early-game Luck triggering a bit easier.  

I haven't played enough with Necropolis to make informed nerfing suggestions (or Stronghold for buffing), but Necromancy clearly needs a nerf.  

Anyway, I hope a lot of people jump in here and make suggestions; these are simply my rather limited thoughts.


The Gating change seems good, and yeah I was thinking of buffing luck too.

GOOD NEWS BTW!
One person in the modding thread seems to have the files to open game.orc.
That means we may be soon be able to mod creature data, growth etc, alt upgrades, new creatures, etc.

In that case I will be able to fix cerberi and goblins!
Keep your hopes up guys.

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Pitlord
Pitlord


Known Hero
posted February 17, 2012 07:19 PM

i guess u cant mod simultanous turns for mp?

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xerox
xerox


Promising
Undefeatable Hero
posted February 17, 2012 07:23 PM

well the modded stuff can't be used for multiplayer anyway, but against the AI I guess its nice

im probably going to remove ALL ressurection abilities in the game
____________
Over himself, over his own
body and
mind, the individual is
sovereign.
- John Stuart Mill

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Falconian
Falconian


Adventuring Hero
posted February 18, 2012 01:59 AM

I skipped multiplayer altogether in H6 due to lack of shared turns and generally because people quit at the slightest sign of defeat.

I just tried the orc editor and it works!
I can now mod unit stats, buildings and such.

If you guys are up for making a balance patch I'm available to code it in.

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alcibiades
alcibiades


Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
posted February 18, 2012 09:06 AM

I would think such a project is great in the long terms, but I think it's way too early to do it yet. UbiHole has not even brought the game to a state where one could say it is remotely finished, and making large-scale modding projects on something that might be a completely different game later on seems hardly worth the efford to me. But of course, it's great to uncover what can actually be modded.
____________
What will happen now?

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LarkinVB
LarkinVB


Known Hero
posted February 18, 2012 05:03 PM

Regarding the speed UBI is releasing patches, I will really appreciate any mod for the game. Hope the AI can be modded too as well as neutrals strength and growth rate. The game is pathetically easy even on the strongest difficulty settings.

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Falconian
Falconian


Adventuring Hero
posted February 19, 2012 08:49 AM

Quote:
I would think such a project is great in the long terms, but I think it's way too early to do it yet. UbiHole has not even brought the game to a state where one could say it is remotely finished, and making large-scale modding projects on something that might be a completely different game later on seems hardly worth the efford to me. But of course, it's great to uncover what can actually be modded.


Uh well, you sure got a point... We have very limited modding tools in H6 compared to what we had in H5, and the coding is done very differently as well.
More messy and spread whereas H5's code was more organized, accessible and clean.

But hey, if they are giving up with patching/updating H6 I want to try to make the game as enjoyable as possible - afterall it's still good ol' epic Heroes we're talking about.

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Nelgirith
Nelgirith


Promising
Supreme Hero
posted February 19, 2012 09:08 AM

Quote:
We have very limited modding tools in H6 compared to what we had in H5, and the coding is done very differently as well.
More messy and spread whereas H5's code was more organized, accessible and clean.

*faints*
*with Mc Enroe's voice* You CANNOT be serious !

Even a pig barn is cleaner than  H5's code ... So yeah H5's code might be less messy than H6's, but H5's code was the best way to show programming students what NOT to do

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Drakon-Deus
Drakon-Deus


Undefeatable Hero
Qapla'
posted February 19, 2012 12:02 PM

Nice initiative, but I still think MM:H or whatever they call it is six feet under.

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Falconian
Falconian


Adventuring Hero
posted February 19, 2012 08:42 PM

Quote:
Quote:
We have very limited modding tools in H6 compared to what we had in H5, and the coding is done very differently as well.
More messy and spread whereas H5's code was more organized, accessible and clean.

*faints*
*with Mc Enroe's voice* You CANNOT be serious !

Even a pig barn is cleaner than  H5's code ... So yeah H5's code might be less messy than H6's, but H5's code was the best way to show programming students what NOT to do


I dunno, opinions in regard of programming methods vary.
I personally like homm5's code, yes it is somewhat basic yet it is well-organized and clear.

To make a metaphor, H5 code is an OK pasta with well-placed ingredients, nothing special but not something you would say no to.
H6 code is a dish of top-notch caviar and fresh swordfish.. with added ice cream, rum, rotten chips, old chewing gums, and a spray of cement on top.
That's how I see it


Then again, the idea to make a community patch is because I'm a stubborn pessimist and in my eyes H6 was just a money-maker.
In the code you can even find a folder named Academy, which hints me again in the direction that they just needed money and H6 was just that... I hope to be wrong.

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alcibiades
alcibiades


Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
posted February 20, 2012 09:49 AM

Quote:
Then again, the idea to make a community patch is because I'm a stubborn pessimist and in my eyes H6 was just a money-maker.
In the code you can even find a folder named Academy, which hints me again in the direction that they just needed money and H6 was just that... I hope to be wrong.

I think it has been all but officially comfirmed that the original intention was to have Academy included as 6th faction in vanilla release, but that it was later scraped for either funding or time limitations, or both. I guess the good news is that it increases the chance of having more factions appearing later as DLC/expansions.
____________
What will happen now?

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Simpelicity
Simpelicity


Promising
Famous Hero
Video maker
posted February 21, 2012 03:58 PM
Edited by Simpelicity at 16:01, 21 Feb 2012.

Might want to add in the first post that you can now fully mod this thing... Maybe the project'll get more love.
(or did I get your posts wrong?)

So, a few ideas I was having for balance, but only for the factions I really know (Necro and Haven) as of now...

For necro, I dunno about reducing their healing capacities necessarily. But I'd go for making them trickier to use.

For necromancy, I would like to try making it so the gauge only fills up when you take losses, but fills up fast enough, and has enough power, that if the ennemy focus fires on the one unit you're always going to have enough to heal it back up. The effect of that goes both ways : focus firing is less effective against the undead, the more you do it, the more efficiently they can heal. On the other hand, if you spread the damage out, or even just focus on 2 units instead of one (say, ghosts and liches instead of just liches), then necro has a choice to make on where he puts his heal. Hard to justify on a lore point of view, but I think it would be interesting balance-wise.
Second change, to the ghost wail : make it so the entirety of it's healing comes from draining life (but do increase a little bit the draining amounts). I would suggest, tentatively, that the bonus to draining be about 2 thirds of the base healing it has right now. What that would do is, first off force you to set it up so you can drain as much as you can when healing with. On a math level, this would mean that if you only drain from one creature, you get a weaker heal than before. 2 creatures and you get a slight boost. 3 or more and you get a real boost. But you have to get the three or more, and those in good position for it might not even be the ones you want to heal. So see, the wail is not necessarily weaker, just trickier to use. Oh and, for those that would say "but then you have nearly no heals against necros!" (only necromancy would be there for you), I'd like to point out that it goes both ways. Changes the battle dynamics a little bit, but doesn't exactly disadvantage you. And from a lore point of view, I really like the idea that the undead's rather large healing arsenal relies almost solely on their ability to drain life from the living (while other factions have more straight up healing abilities).
As for the rest of the healing abilities, liches are fine as long as it's a one shot thing. 'sides, they act as a strong incentive to bring your armies forward, which the necros need. They deal tons of damage, increase the damage of other creatures (champion's ranged, ghosts), they heal, but if you tie them up, they get near useless. And with the necromancy change proposed, tying them up becomes more of a necessity, 'cause focusing them down doesn't quite work. And as for the drain life spell, it relies solely on the ability of the unit it's cast upon to deal damage. Can't save the nearly dead stacks, it can just help them stay alive longer. So it's fine in that sense.

Not entirely certain of the balance effects, but it would certainly make them harder/more fun to use.

As for Haven, I don't have a definite idea on what to do to them. As much as healing is kinda part of necro's identity (making me very hesitant to move them away from it), as much as I feel the Haven should be a little bit more focused on having above average units with very good resilience. Maybe tone down the healing from sisters/vestals? But then again, I wouldn't do that drastically.

Few things I would do though :

Something I don't quite like about Haven is how they get a lot of free shots, at least on the first turn : rush dive, glories that can cross the whole field and even incapacitate one of your units immediately, and before you even get a turn too.

Imperial griffins need to do a whole lot less damage with their dive. Area of effect damage is usually balanced by doing reduced damage making them more effective, but only if they hit multiple targets. I'd tentatively go for the same 2 thirds damage, personally. With the dive, you rarely get more than 3 targets. So, the dive on one unit was a slight waste of time (did less damage than if you had just attacked the target, but at least no retaliation/pain mirror) Two targets you just did a bit more damage than what you would have with the normal attack. Hit 3 targets, and you just doubled the damage you would'a done with a normal attack (keeping in mind that each stack individually was only dealt 66% of the normal damage, and not completely lethal damage like huge imperial griffin stacks do right now). This whole thing keeps the damage of griffins under control, while still rewarding good dives with "extra" good damage, while bad dives do less (get penalized, I guess?).

As for the glories, I just hate that they can do stuff to the other army before said other army doesn't even have time to react. I'd tone down their initiative, but just a little bit. The way I see it, if you take every faction's highest initiative creature, I think the only one that should be lower than Haven would have to be necros. All the others should have this one small possibility to set something up, or react to the glories' placement, or whatever. Haven has good enough troops that it can deal with it. Also, the glories' blind ability is rather powerful, and doesn't cost anything insofar as you get the losses back at the end of the battle. Well, right now it's bugged and they don't come back, but what I'm sayin' is, maybe it should stay that way. With great power, comes a cost, is the principle of that.

One last possible change, to a unit that is powerful but not really overpowered (so I guess more optional-esque in my mind?), but I'd suggest increasing the jousting bonus of the riders but reducing their base damage, all of that done so that the maximum damage it has now with jousting is the same before and after the change. The point? Again, make them trickier to use. The no retaliation ability is powerful in it's own right, and you can hardly pen them in anymore to stop them from using it, with their ghost ability. So I say, fine, you got powerful abilities. But now you are entirely reliant upon them to do anything relevant. Otherwise your damage is subpar at best. Trickier/more fun to use. Which I guess is kind of the theme here for me?

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Falconian
Falconian


Adventuring Hero
posted February 24, 2012 05:14 PM

Simpelicity, I feel like you more or less.
Haven and Necro aren't overpowered, it's the other way around; Stronghold and Inferno are underpowered.
Early game they have extremely hard creeping, mid-game they lack spells (orcs) or creature power (inferno) to make a strong attack or even defend, late-game they are simply outclassed as they are not the first-turn demolishers they used to be.

So yeah I agree that toning down Haven/Necro to make them as weak as Inferno/Stronghold would just give us 4 weak factions, I'd much rather buff the poor orcs and demons.

Now that we are able to mod creature stats I think we could find a balance making a hard numbers mod.

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seingeist
seingeist


Promising
Adventuring Hero
posted February 24, 2012 06:42 PM

Quote:
Now that we are able to mod creature stats I think we could find a balance making a hard numbers mod.



I agree.  I proposed some hard changes in the balance thread, but didn't really get any takers.  

I disagree somewhat though about Necro not being OP.  Their damage is way too high, and given their other advantages, the damage of Stronghold/Inferno would need to be buffed up to ridiculous levels to bring them up to Necro-level.  I think that the numbers can stay more under-control by nerfing Necro damage a bit while buffing the damage of Inferno/Stronghold (well, technically buffing their growth more than their damage).  

As for Haven, I don't really think that they're too OP.  A good nerf to the Praetorians (growth and effectiveness of defensive special ability) would go a long way towards putting the Haven on more equal footing with the other factions.  Their bulletproof turtle-bloc of Praetorian-Marksmen-Vestals-Glories is just too cheesy and unbreakable.  

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mike80d
mike80d


Famous Hero
Map Maker
posted February 24, 2012 07:06 PM
Edited by mike80d at 19:07, 24 Feb 2012.

The ability of the Glories to dispel anything and everything just by attacking NEEDS to change.  I honestly think they are the most overpowered creature in the game, primarily because of this ability.  

I also agree that in addition to a bump for Inferno & Stronghold (especially Inferno in early game), Necro and to some degree Haven need to be nerfed.  Perhaps adjusting/reducing how much is resurrected with their racials could help.  

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Simpelicity
Simpelicity


Promising
Famous Hero
Video maker
posted February 24, 2012 09:28 PM

I am working on a video demonstration of what I mean about necros, but so far all I've managed to do is discover that I need to control all variables to get what I want. So I'll try doing a hotseat game with myself to set up an acceptable battle and give control of necros to the AI.

The jist of it though, is that necros' strenght is mainly centered on 2 creatures (ghosts, liches), both have very low defenses, and in the lich's case you don't even have to kill them, you can mostly neutralize them by tying them up. In other words, a lot of their strenght can be targeted and destroyed. The other creatures are varying in quality, but generally decent, and somewhat annoying to deal with too. As I see it right now, it is those creatures that are the problem. My general idea is to keep their strenghts intact (more or less, open to discussion), and make everything that surrounds it a little weaker, so that it has to rely more heavily on said strenghts, but those strenghts are fragile, so that may be a problem for them, depends on how the battle plays out. But more on that once I have my video demo set up (if I ever get to that point, hopefully I'll have it done this weekend).

Quote:
The ability of the Glories to dispel anything and everything just by attacking NEEDS to change.  I honestly think they are the most overpowered creature in the game, primarily because of this ability.  




Wrong, they have the ability to dispel anything by moving around. It affects everyone around them when they teleport, not just the ennemy they attack (least that's what I gathered).

That being said, they're not completely overpowered, because their damage output is low, and their defenses are subpar at best, although you have to go after them (no retaliation). I do agree they need some tweaking though, but like I said I'd just make them slower. I proposed removing initiative, but I wouldn't mind also removing 1 movement point (so that the only way they cross the whole field is if they are hasted or you have tactics 2). T'would require some testing though.


I'll just throw one last thought out here :

Necro is the only magic-centered faction left standing (sanctuary did not feel very magic-oriented, but maybe I'm wrong? the other 3 are might oriented mostly). Go back as near as HoMM5, you have dungeon and academy to keep them company, and more importantly to divie up the magic specialities.
What that gives us now is, necros are not only the "best" at healing, they're also the best at casting damage spells, with that permanent blood ability that makes ennemies weaker to blood abilities (and spells!). They've got the best chain lightning around. Don't know how that factors in the current balance of things, but I'm pretty sure it factors somewhere, and I haven't seen anyone mention it. Granted I haven't read the whole balance discussion thread, but that thing is rather large now.

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Falconian
Falconian


Adventuring Hero
posted February 25, 2012 02:19 AM
Edited by Falconian at 03:52, 25 Feb 2012.

Quote:
I disagree somewhat though about Necro not being OP.  Their damage is way too high


Not sure, I can somewhat counter them if I get time to prepare.

I was able to completely destroy an equal necro army with orcs, with the right setup of course.
In the end, liches are easily disposed of by any ranged creature; if the enemy blocks them it's not so hard to destroy the surrounding units as they are incredibly weak.
Of course, I had balanced the cyclops before (+25% dmg to their beam attack) and I charged madly in the early turns.

The thing is, that was on late game: in early & mid game orcs and inferno are still too weak to face necro properly.
Goblins' damage improve a lot with numbers and hero level, and so do the other units.

Haven and Sanctuary can take'em on at any point in the game, we just need to make Orcs and Inferno scale better in their early days.

==============================

Now on the modding part.

GOOD NEWS

1) Ultimately found how to mod the range of creatures.
Range can be set to full (like Centaurs and Crossbowmen) or half (Goblins).

2) I also found a way to give "no retaliation" to units and modify ranged penalty.
This change would fix both Inferno and Stronghold's main issues.

I found the code for Cerberus' attack:



Focus on the "dwFlag": the coder gave flags to attacks instead of adding passive abilties in H6.
This means no retaliation, range penalty and other passive changes to creature actions have to be done this way.

In fact, if you go to check upgraded Harpy's attack...



"& No Retaliation" is what they give them no retaliation, so if you add the same flag to the Cerberi's attack they get no retaliation as well.

BAD NEWS

For some reasons, when I add the no retaliation flag and save the game.orc, the change "reverts" back, like I never did it.
When I open the orc again "no retaliation" isn't there anymore.
Other changed stuff actually changes, but that mod reverts to original.


So could anyone test this?
It could be a problem of just me and it may work for some of you.


Ninja edit: To fix Necro's high damage I could just give range penalty to Liches, and/or Spiders.
And maybe remove ranged penalty from upgraed Skellies so they are actually useful.
That, or we can simply tone their attack down a bit; for instance, Lich damage is now 18-22... we could try with 15-20.

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mike80d
mike80d


Famous Hero
Map Maker
posted February 25, 2012 03:07 PM

Quote:


Quote:
The ability of the Glories to dispel anything and everything just by attacking NEEDS to change.  I honestly think they are the most overpowered creature in the game, primarily because of this ability.  




Wrong, they have the ability to dispel anything by moving around. It affects everyone around them when they teleport, not just the ennemy they attack (least that's what I gathered).



How am I wrong if you're not sure yourself?  They do dispel everything around them when they move (which is pretty much every time they attack since you're rarely going to corner them).  However, they dispel all bad effects from your troops, and all good effects from your enemies.  This is WAY to much!

Heroes and creatures get to cast 1 spell per turn.  For a creature to dispel everything it should require a lot of effort.  The developers instead did the worst thing possible and instead of it being hard to dispel, they attached this dispel mechanic to their attack.  It takes no skill to dispel with the glories.

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