| Heroes on the battlefield and other elements – Heroes | |
|
PandaTar
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Celestial Heavens Mascot
|
posted October 18, 2026 02:16 PM |
|
|
Poll Question:
Heroes on the battlefield and other elements – Heroes
Kudos. Squee.
This is the thread to discuss things such as how hero interactions work on the battlefield, and which elements you can find there as well. There's also a poll at the end, which is just to get an overall vibe.
Back in the day, I was in favor of having heroes present on the battlefield, like in Heroes 4, although I also agreed that they got overpowered and mixing a few of them in the same party could simply kill almost any stack of thousands of monsters by simple a combination of spells and artifacts.
My ideas shifted a bit, to direct presence to a more AoE kind of presence, where here would move around too, but not quite engage with enemy units, but the number of rules and exceptions started to snowball again, so I took a step back to set something.
What I'm currently inclined to use is this:
FRONTS
We have three lines: backline, support line and frontline. Backline is where you hero is positioned, along with your heavy, unmoving siege machinery – the trebuchet. Support line is where your war machines and support units are located, such as cannons, scorpions, tents. Support lines care be reached by enemy forces. Support units can move forward and backward, but they take one turn to pack, move very slowly (few movement points), then take another turn to unpack. This is mainly because they obey some range rules and AoE effects. They can't stay too far behind their troops, or they can't support them properly, that's logical. And Frontline is your actual army. For ambushes, we have Flank Lines, but it happens only against your army. During ambushes, only your frontline and your hero appear on the battlefield (just like when you're attacking a creature bank or treasure hoard in Heroes 3, and enemies appear from all directions).
HERO ON THE BATTLEFIELD
You hero will be stationary almost all the time, as in previous Heroes installments (except 4). They have their particular commands, and commands they issue for their troops. Command panels are individual, so a hero can perform and act personally, and issue commands for each individual unit during a given turn.
Hero commands: TAG, CAST SPELL, PARLEY, SURRENDER, FLEE.
- TAG: this is how the physical presence is taken into consideration here. The command TAG makes your hero tag along an allied unit for the next action that will be take by that troop. When a hero tags a troop, they provide a series of fighting bonuses. At the end of the round, the hero will resume their position in the backline. However, if the troop your hero is tagged to gets bombarded by many attacks sustaining heavy casualties, it'll injure your hero. Injury is symbolic here. Your hero will return to the backline, but they'll skip their next particular 1-3 turns healing, depending on losses. First Aid Skill may play a role to decreases healing time.
- CAST SPELL: your hero can cast spells on enemy troops, on the battlefield or directly on the enemy hero (this latter I'm still deciding). Casting spells on an enemy hero are limited to debuffs. There's a chance to miss or fail, due the distance between backlines. Certain debuffs, specially highly debilitating ones like Sleep, Confusion or so will affect the Army Commands panel. Sleeping heroes cannot issue orders, obviously, so troops will autofight based on learned experience (AI-based on player behaviour, like in Alien: Isolation). Obviously, some debuffs simply won't work, like Petrification.
- PARLEY: a truce between both armies, and both armies can retreat unscathed, having, say, 2 turns where they cannot engage in battle again. Parley command appears as soon as engaging in battle, before armies are even shown, to avoid using Parley to learn of enemy's forces.
- SURRENDER: work in the same way as ever, you pay ransom to go free, back to your nearest town with your current troops.
- FLEE: abandon your troops and get back to your nearest town, at the tavern. Fleeing heroes can't immediately hire new troops, for they get a morale penalty by abandoning troops, so townsfolk get suspicious (still thinking on this situation, but I think I'll eventually scratch out this penalty).
Army commands: MOVE, ATTACK, DEFEND, WAIT, CAST SPELL, MEDITATE, USE ABILITY.
Each troop has this set of commands. They all are mostly self-explained, so I'll focus on the last two.
- MEDITATE: specifically for Spell Casters, unit lowers its defenses, loses retaliation ability and loses its turn. Meditation grants a certain number of spell points to be recovered for the next turn. Any damage taken breaks meditation. Meditation won't be available after a Wait command. It must be taken as soon as its the creature's turn. This has nothing to do with a hero's Meditation Skill.
- USE ABILITY: some units have active abilities, similar with spells, but they don't cost spell points, although they have to cool down, or just a single use per battle.
BACKLINE
The Hero stands here, with a trebuchet (and a Hireling or NPC). Only the Trebuchet can be targeted by enemy forces, and they only appear during siege battles. A trebuchet doesn't move and targets randomly, by default, the city's defensive structures. A hero with Ballistics Skill get a small command panel of its own: CALIBRATE, DEFENSES, TOWN.
- CALIBRATE: given trebuchet projectiles can miss, calibrate spends a turn to guarantee a hit on defensive structures in the next turn. Choosing this will make the TOWN option unavailable.
- DEFENSES: default attack, it'll hit one of the defensive structures.
- TOWN: a random attack. When you pick this, the trebuchet will shoot beyond defensive structures, randomly striking or missing, town buildings. Given they're out of view, Calibrate won't work. Although almost all structures can be damaged, there's a hierarchic order prioritized: support, dwellings, economy, main structure. Just to illustrate, trebuchet would have 40% chance of striking support buildings, then 30% dwellings, 20% economy, and 10% main structure.
SUPPORT LINE
War machines and some support units are settled here. They're mostly unchanged, although every faction might have one or two unique structures placed on that line too; example, Necropolis has the Corpse Pile supporting structure, that adds to the ending Necromancy results still during battle, immediatly lowering the number of units which can be resurrected.
So you have: SIPHON, MANGONEL and CANNON, for offense. MEDICAL UNIT (TENT) and AMMO CART.
- SIPHON: greek-fire sort of unit, shorter range attacks on nearby armies with decent damage and damage over time effects. Siphon, Mangonel and Cannon can be moved, although their movement points are very limited. They spend twice as many movement points to be moved highground.
- MANGONEL: medium damage, with wider range and area effect, able to bypass obstacles.
- CANNON: longest range, decent damage, can target certain obstacles and castle defenses, but has a line-of-view hit.
- MEDICAL CAMP (TENT): cleanses, heals and prevents damage inflicted on neaby troops. It has an area of effect. First Aid Skill helps preventing deaths. Medical camp can be moved slowly, after one turn for packing, and one turn for unpacking, to any level of ground.
- AMMO CART: Ammo cart is a TAGGING unit, and it can be stacked up to 5 units. It'll remain on the support line without any effectiveness and also targetable. It can advance and retreat, with very limited movement points. It can tag along an allied ranged unit, working normally with ground units. Flying and teleporting units will leave it behind when moving, so the ammo cart must be taken to their position again. It gets destroyed if the tagging troop gets slain. It can be moved to any level of ground. The Spire faction (former Tower/Academy) has a flying ammo cart, for example.
FRONTLINE
Basically, where all armies are positioned, in a hex-grid board, where units have 4 different sizes, meaning they occupy a different number of hexes. Small and medium-sized units occupy 1 hex. Large-sized units can occupy 2 or 4 hexes. Giant units occupy 7 (1 surrounded by 6). Ratio of ground level occupied by the unit will determine their current position. Small and medium units don't have ratio. Large and Giant units will round down 50%. Example: a giant unit that's standing on 4 high ground levels, will be considered standing on high ground, whereas standing on 3 high ground levels, will be considered on even ground (or lower ground, if the next level is lower). There's a relation between units that I might explain later. This size setting is yet a work in progress. I'm still toying with the idea if sizes are represented physically, or just through perks/abilities. It might be simplified, thus, I'm still thinking on that.
OBSTACLES
Objects like houses, lean-tos, bony carcasses, rivulets, ponds, lakes, flooded areas, archways, trees etc. Some obstacles can be destroyed, removed, or altered in some way. Few can be interacted through spell casting or abilities as well. Some work as barriers, blocking line-of-sight, or direct hits, even covering a unit completely. Others just block a direct path, or apply movement penalties.
SIEGE ELEMENTS
Siege battle, you have all three lines behind two defensive lines, one for the wall-like structure, and another layer which changes between factions, which is to say, the 'moat'. There are also towers and the Keep, where the defending hero is positioned. If there's a governor (a stationary hero) in town, they'll grant a few reinforcements every few rounds. The Hero who's in the Keep can't be targeted by enemy's spell casting, until the keep collapses.
This is the gist of it. So, the question is, which format do you prefer when it comes to Hero presence on the battlefield?
____________
Heroes Fanart Project Arts
Poll Results:
 0 votes (0%)
Hero engages directly in battle, in presence, physically and magically (as in H4)
2 votes (100%)
Hero engages indirectly in battle, physically and magically (as in Heroes 5)
0 votes (0%)
Hero engages indirectly in battle, magically only (as in Heroes 2 or 3)
0 votes (0%)
Hero has a commander, somewhat like in some mods
0 votes (0%)
Another approach; elaborate.
|
|
LordCameron
Promising
Famous Hero
Veteran of the Succession Wars
|
posted October 18, 2026 06:25 PM |
|
|
I think that if the hero gets too involved in the battle at some point you are just playing Age of Wonders, and the hero becomes your strongest and most important unit.
My preference is heroes 2,3 style, but with some physical options. The reason I don't say heroes 5, is attacking every turn is too much. I'd rather have sparing tactical use of magic or physical. Maybe a stamina to go along with spell points.
Though the problem I see with stamina is that it just becomes an alternate magic system and then might and magic heroes feel the same. Maybe might has consumables that refresh at the end of combat or in town or something. Intel they can gather and spend.
For heroes games it is always about keeping it simple which is hard from the design perspective because it is fun to brainstorm.
____________
What are Homm Songs based on?
|
|
PandaTar
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Celestial Heavens Mascot
|
|
posted October 18, 2026 06:39 PM |
|
|
LordCameron said:
I think that if the hero gets too involved in the battle at some point you are just playing Age of Wonders, and the hero becomes your strongest and most important unit.
My preference is heroes 2,3 style, but with some physical options. The reason I don't say heroes 5, is attacking every turn is too much. I'd rather have sparing tactical use of magic or physical. Maybe a stamina to go along with spell points.
Yep, that's why I though tagging was less of an attack going on, but a physical manifestation still. You simply boots a unit's action for that turn, then you get back to the backlines. Also must be careful not to get attacked and lose turns. Comparing the effect of a spell casting hero, to a might hero attacking, it was very lackluster. Spell casters can simply destroy, whereas might heroes basically boost stats and stare – or in Heroes 5, go and hit enemies for some lousy damage. But I mean mostly when a hero stays only mighty, or only magical, of course.
Quote:
For heroes games it is always about keeping it simple which is hard from the design perspective because it is fun to brainstorm.
Sure is, hoho.
____________
Heroes Fanart Project Arts
|
| |
|
|
