Heroes of Might and Wisdom

CONT.

1) barbarian monsters, not just normal units. Make the camps get progressively stronger, more and quicker with more powerful monsters if they stay untouched over time. They Grow and maybe quite powerfully. Who wants Kygyls spawning off their coasts.
AND HEY
Why not camps in the oceans spawning, sharks, krakens, Sea serpents, for our lovely triremes and battle ships to fight. I still want to fight Dragons with my f-15s.

2) OK,,,here it comes....Let's make WOnders of the world something unique and Variable. They are ancient areas that hold seats of power.
a) Give your Heroes bonuses if they are within your city control. Could be a flat bonus such as +1 might, Wis, ect per wonder.
b) Each one could have an additional bonus just like they do with the Faith, culture, let's say Fountain of youth gives +20 heal per turn to heroes globally, and the Garden of Eden Gives you a free hero(random), and Sol Mines gives you -25% purchase of Weapons, and Allur(sp?) gives you -15% xp bonus to level. MAKE the Wonder Effect Heroes base on what the wonder is. I love the NW and I think you can have them play into the game.

3) OK another resource? MAGIC Nodes. I am thinking old Might and Magic games. These nodes when worked give (?) what? Maybe +5% damage to spells cast for casters and -5% damage from spells for non casters PER Node. You can trade them just like any other resource.

4) Make some Civilizations that concentrate on heroes, magic, and anything else that you think would give them the leg up using your mod.

5) Let's add tot he terrain a bit. Can you add some eerie temples, fantasy graphics planted over the map now. Nothing to weird. Maybe around ocean barbarian camps put some weeds/reeds, etc. that effect movement and combat. Not so easy to cruise in and kill them. Same with Barb Camps. Maybe some graveyard, Scrub , etc, around them that give the same combat bonuses and effect movement. Make the camps little fortresses. Right now I spam fight them for experience, and that's good . They are off fighting monsters not citing in the cities doing nothing. But it's pretty easy killing the camps. Get there before others and you will have level 2 artifacts pretty soon.

6) Give the heroes something to do if they are not killing monsters or at war.
a) Every turn a hero sits in a city earns maybe +1% to a random item built and put in a heroes pouch. Either cumulatively or selectively each heroes has their own counter. After 100 turns they get some reward for fabrication. You work out the turn scale(per era).
b) Quests: I would love to see some quests that pop up like the Cummunitas MOF every so often. They could be decisions you pick such as
You have been knighted by a royal family and have been given a choice by the royal family
a) Marry a their princess +100 happiness from the festival you throw at an expense of -100 gp.
b) Throw a celebration for +50 happiness for -50 gp.
c) Thank the king and receive his gifts. +25 gold.
OR
An ancient tablet was found by one of your heroes in an old mystical grove. You can do one of the following.
a) Learn it power of nature and give +25 xp to all your heroes, destroy the grove -100 happiness to the local people.
b) Use its power to enhance your Mana nodes (or NW) by giving +1% damage bonus to all magic spells/node or wonder but cost you -50 culture for not advancing modern knowledge and staying with the old ways.
c) Return the scroll to leave the powers as they may and not destroy the grove. +100 faith from the religious community but permanent -5% cost to further hero purchases.
OR
You Discover a wild magical power unseen before in this world that seams to be fixed upon the land around it. Do you:
1) Transmute it to help your mages, +1 wis. -100 gold expense for the research.
2) Destroy it affecting the world balance of magic. -1 wis for all casters, -100 gold for the destruction of the land.
3) Leave it as is and not try to bring down the wrath of the gods. +100 Faith.

You get the idea. The limits are endless. I think the options should be based on Magic, Faith, Gold, Heroes. Maybe some science and culture since it is the opposite of magic.

lastly for now.

Culture and science which I hinted to above should be in direct competition to MAGIC and the OLD ways.

So you could do some simple things like make the cost of heroes, items, etc. get more expensive not based on how many but base on what ERA they are in. The longer history progresses the more science takes over.

OR

They same holds true for culture. You could make a Magic Social Tree with abilities(you think them up) but For each tree item you pick the cost for culture progress actually goes up by lets say +10% more, cumulative. So if they are say 7 items in the tree including the first one opening it then after you pick the finisher you would have a -70% cost to further culture.

THIS IS A GREAT way to make all the powers you add to the game in check with the other talent trees. IF YOU GO MAGIC you don't go much firth in other things. Who will need to, you will crush others. So other talents in social trees that reduce the purchases may be critical to balance it .

So what does the magic social tree look like.
Opener- Discover mystical EARTHFORGE, you can purchase items with gold. Unlocks the store. get +1 item per hero of your choice. Normal only.

A1-Scholastic Schools of magic built- +10% exp. bonus to all hero leveling.
B1-Conquer the power of Water Magic- +15% heal on water for heroes.
B2-Conquer the power of Earth magic- +15% heal on Land for heroes.
B3-Conquer the power of Fire Magic- +15% Combat for heroes on land.
B$ Conquer the power of Air Magic- +15% Combat for heroes on water.
C1-Discover the power of the Alchemists Stone. +15% gold per turn.

Finisher-Enhance the EARTHFORGE to powers of the gods. +1 Lvl 3 epic item per hero in the game.


I know you are hard at work but I had to throw all this crap in.

I love the monster idea for barbs
but I'm againist the worker heroes, when I design Heroes of Three Kingdoms, I use worker heroes to burst production/culture/gold, it turns out to completed break game balance, these thing should be done by great persons, and heroes focus on war. on the other hand, will reduce number of heroes to 4 or 5

I'm halfway in building the unit/building model

here are the current change that would be made:
A mana system replace the cooldown, heroes and some units will use mana to cast skill/spell
Variable HP max, Battlecruiser will have 550 HP and Zergling only 50 HP
new combat rule, since HP is not fixed, combat damage are set by your combat strength

heroes can learn both talent and promotions, many people want the promotions back, so I think should allow heroes to learn both of them, and let hero upgrade faster
The heroes teches in the upper line tech tree can unlock a new hero account and allow you to hire new heroes. you start with one normal hero, when you researched magic hero, you can hire another hero, and upgrade them to magic hero, so you are at most hire 4 hero( the extra hero tech may unlock more hero account, but very expensive)
I'm not sure how these hero get upgrade, maybe can use a fixed upgrade path, eg., a Ranger with upgrade in this path:
Normal Ranger -> Magic Ranger -> Unique Ranger ->Legendary Ranger
or just let heroes to upgrade to normal units as before

4 level of Era, skill and units, there are 4 Era, Normal Era(Grey), Magic Era(Blue), Unique Era(Golden) and Legendary(Purple) Era, as show in the tech trees, unit unlocked in the Golden Era will be Golden units, skill won't be able to cast on higher Era units, so, a blue skill won't hurt golden units

skill/spells will have 4 level too, Normal Whirlwind will deal 25 damage, and Legendary Whirlwind can deal 200 damage but cost much more mana

current trouble is the mod getting too large and complex, I can't see an end when I can finish that, but I'll try to make a simple early alpha as soon as possible, and add more function gradually

epicss said:

I finish a first design of the tech trees, there are 7 tech trees, Terran, Zerg, Protoss, Human, Elf, Orc and Undead, each with different units and buildings, each tech unlock 1 building and up to 3 units.

I hope each tech tree has different power, some has more production, some has better research, some better culture. And I found it hard to design and balance these buildings.

I need your help and ideas on these buildings. I attached a spreedsheet of the building list. If you are interested in help design, you can give your ideas on the buildings, make them both interesting and balanced.

7 tech trees:

Spoiler :

Click to expand...

Is there a beta version of this? I had been waiting for that to play since it looks like it changes so much .

I'm not really in favor of having multiple tech trees -- i think it limits decisions too much and forces you down extreme paths. If there was a way to combine them all in a delicate way with a mixture of the games/races, I think it could be pretty amazing.

this is still in design, I'm on unit/building models now, based on current progress, I hope I can make the first version in 3 month

for the tech trees, how about this? If you play Terran and you conquer a Zerg town, then you can research zerg tech and build zerg building/unit in that town, this allow you to unlock more than one tech tree, and build more units

otherwise, if you conquer a town from other civ, you need to convert it to your town and build it from the start, since there is no shared buildings

epicss said:

this is still in design, I'm on unit/building models now, based on current progress, I hope I can make the first version in 3 month

for the tech trees, how about this? If you play Terran and you conquer a Zerg town, then you can research zerg tech and build zerg building/unit in that town, this allow you to unlock more than one tech tree, and build more units

otherwise, if you conquer a town from other civ, you need to convert it to your town and build it from the start, since there is no shared buildings

Click to expand...

How does the regular tech tree fit into this? Is there no normal tech tree anymore?

If there isn't, how Wonders/Wonder racing fit in? Without a shared tech tree between races it really won't feel anything like Civ anymore. I'm just not sure at this point if that is good, but i'd have to see the finished product.

should unlock most wonder by policy

Interesting start you have here. The 3D models look great! I apologize for the delay; I know that in the past I have had better reply times than this. I hope that the lack of a timely response from anyone about the buildings did not slow down your motivation or progress too much. I have a few general comments in addition to my modifications to the buildingsDesign.xls file.

In the normal game, there are 9 non-wonder buildings available just in the ancient era. In this current setup, it takes 3 eras combined to get 9 buildings. That is not good! However, I completely understand why you are having difficulty. The original Starcraft/Warcraft games have only about 15 total buildings and unit types per civ available to use as source material. This means either (1) inventing new buildings that don't exist in the actual Starcraft/Warcraft games or (2) combining the functions of multiple regular civ buildings into each Starcraft/Warcraft building, making every building as strong or stronger than a wonder. I personally believe that the more options a player has, the better. The mod will feel very limited compared to regular Civ if the player can only research/build ~25% of the things in this mod that you could research/build in the normal game. But if we must move backwards to move forwards, then I understand.

Planning ahead for later releases than the next one, I redesigned everything using option (1), inventing new buildings and new techs and adding them to the file. The inventions are still loosely based on the source material. There are 55 total different buildings and 11 national wonders available throughout a regular civ game; I have replaced all of them with equivalent buildings or technology buffs that are appropriate to the given civilization. I only had the time to do it for the Zerg civ. I also didn't want to do more because it was a lot of work and I was not sure you would even accept the idea. If you like it, though, I can start similar work on some of the other civs. It will go much faster if another volunteer or two can work on the Warcraft civs while I finish the Starcraft ones, but if no one does, I will get to all of it eventually. Honestly, the part that takes the longest is inventing good names for everything. Making new and balanced stats is easy by comparison. Before I do anything else, though, I need confirmation from you that you will actually use very many of these ideas.

In order to better convey my concepts, I had to add new columns to the file, so it cannot be used directly to make code, especially since I didn't know what indexes to use. Listed default production and research costs are based on the base values I found in the XML files for BNW. There is a lot of data in that file; make sure you scroll all the way over to the right when reading through each row, since some text runs past the cells.

Because I expanded the technologies, we also needed more units, so I added more units to the file as well. They are grouped by concept and unit class. All of them are based on existing Starcraft 1 & 2 units. Other than the scout, all 57 combat units from the regular game now have a zerg replacement! The only parts I had to invent from nothing were the sea units. It's obvious that the zerg would have assimilated aquatic species at some point, but they weren't included in Starcraft for game balance reasons. Sea units are an important element of Civ; I'd prefer if we didn't have to remove them. I'm okay with the zerg water units I suggested being changed, but the other units are accurately named and placed, I think. Unit stats were not included because of time constraints and also because you already looked like you were doing well with them.

I noticed that you removed most of the air units from the game and made a lot of hovering units instead. I think this is the correct choice, so I followed the same example when I was creating new units. Important note about the hovering units, though: it would be nice if they could hover over water as well. It feels silly to embark a mutalisk. The Empires of the Smoky Skies scenario that came with G&K includes hovering airships that can fly over water. You should be able to get some of the code from that to do it. I know other mods have done it. Actually, it might be easier to borrow directly from those mods.

If you look through the file, you might wonder why I have overlords and overseers as the primary sources of happiness in the zerg empire. Basically, it is because the consequences of lacking psionic control of the zerg are virtually the same as lacking happiness in any other empire. The zerg do not care about the happiness of their citizens because the vast majority of them are under complete mind control. Thus, for their purposes, control and happiness are the same thing.

Zerg strengths: happiness, production, science, mobility.
Zerg weaknesses: culture, faith, tourism, early water exploration.

Suggestion: since half of the civs are already masters of space travel, the science victory should instead revolve around the construction of a superweapon that automatically wins the game. I named it "Xel'naga Project," but this is easily changed.

If my tech model gets used, you will also have to disable later era starts. For the zerg in particular, a couple techs grant automatic benefits without requiring additional buildings. The research cost of these techs have been increased to compensate, but if you start in an era where those techs have been automatically researched, it overpowers the zerg. Therefore, I strongly recommend that only ancient era starts be enabled in your mod. The Civilization NiGHTS mod does the same thing. Even without considering the zerg, this is still an important change to make because it will also prevent players from abusing hero hiring with the Colonization social policies to instantly produce a wonder within the first few turns.

thanks for the zerg design, I like the idea of more building/units, but may not be able to add that much
for modding consraint, game will crash if there are more than 200 buildings (I'm not quite sure about the number, but it's around 200), besides wonders and some building used by the game, I think we can mod 150 buildings at most, so, I plan to extend to 20-25 building for each 7 races, beyond that will not be possible

another reason is, I want the new mod to be more focus on combat, there will be more interesting units, heroes and abilities, so, the players should spend more time on combat and adventure, since you need to empty the cup before you can hold more in it, I decide to use a simple tech/building system, you can quickly finish you city building, and than focus on war, and enjoy more fun on war without the trouble to control a dozen of cities at the same time, since they will be much easier to manage in this mod

I like your design of the zerg strehgth and weakness, a top level insight of each race, that's the key make the mod more balance, but without a runing version, it's hard to talk these only on design

I planed to make an alpha version in a few month, but I think that's too late now, I'll try to make a executable one first, it may not be playable, but should be a good prototype that we can use in design process

Thanks for the feedback. I had to get that design out of my brain before I could work on anything else. Now I can work on the thing you actually wanted me to work on, haha. I already have some good ideas for the limited building/tech version. Since I won't be worrying about inventing new names for anything, I should be able to give you something much faster than it took me to make that zerg sample.

Your current building skeleton includes about 12 buildings per race. If the limit is about 200, then you will not be able to extend it by more than an additional 16 or 17 per race. It really is a pity... I worked so hard on that design, too. Although, if you split them into separate Starcraft and Warcraft mods, you could fit in 66 or 50 buildings per race. It would be saddening to have to choose between the two, though. I do like having all of the races together.

even if I split them into 2 mods, loading them together will exceed the limit too

you are a much better designer than I can do, I really can come to design ideas other than the most simple one, I hope I can give you a executable version in a few days, then you can add your design idea on that version, and I can focus on LUA/DLL functions

Yes, I am aware that the same problem would exist if you tried to load two separate mods together. I meant making both, but only using one at a time. Anyway, it was just a thought. There are higher priorities to worry about at the moment.

You don't need to rush. My design will be mostly the same whether I have a running copy or not. Your xls file is clear enough.

A new version of this mod is open for beta here:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=522685

this mod is obselate now, won't receive more update, try the new mod instead, it's much more better than this one

Hey all, I've taken some time to get this mod compatible with Vox Populi/EUI. I opted for this version, instead of some of the others, as it includes only the new heroes system, without any other changes to gameplay. As such, it makes for a great addition to VP imo. I did make some slight changes, however. Civilizations, including the players, no longer receive a free hero in the ancient era, it is instead pushed back to the Classical era. This was done to maintain early game balance. However, heroes can still be purchased in the ancient era for ~100 gold, and that value can be adjusted in the in-game settings menu. The mod is otherwise unchanged. Link below for those interested.