Downloads and Features

Random Hero

Besides historical heroes that are always available for recruitment, when player has accumulates enough combat experience and a screen pop up asking player to choose a hero to recruit for half price, the player can choose not to recruit existing heroes, but to promote a complete new random-generated hero from the veteran soldiers of the faction. Choosing to promote a new random hero cost no money.

A new random hero has a random name, a random portrait that's different from all existing heroes' portraits, a random belief, and random loyalties to each factions. His loyalty to it's creating faction is usually high. He will also have random starting and potential unit combat levels. He will start with no more than 3 starting promotions. He even has a really small chance to be a nine transformation hero.

The real fun for random heroes come from two part. First one is, unlike historical heroes, a random hero's potential unit combat level is hidden. In civilopedia or hero advisor, his potential unit combat levels are shown as '?', unless his current unit combat level is already equal to potential unit combat level. So player don't really know which unit combat type has the most potential, and how big that potential is. Second one is, a random hero will start with zero potential promotions. However, upon each level up until level 11, he will gain 2 more random promotions as potential promotion. He can then choose from these potential promotions when level up. Those potential promotions not chosen will accumulate to next time when hero levels up. So he can turn out to be a powerful hero, is everything goes right.

Dynamic Initial Unit

For HoTK Scenarios, we always wanted to achieve one goal: the accurate simulation of history. The simulation is far from perfection, for two reasons. The first is the limitation of AI, the second is at the same time we want to provide enough challenge for players, so we can't make the historical winners too powerful. The conflict between accurate simulation of history and player challenge will be solved by introducing a mechanic called Dynamic Initial Unit.

In each scenario, every faction has a variable which determines whether that faction subjects to initial unit change. If the faction subjects to initial unit change, then when the faction is chosen by human player, the faction's initial unit will change according to the difficulty level human player chooses. If the difficulty level is equal to or below noble, then no changes will apply. If the difficulty level is above noble, then each of the faction's original initial unit will have a chance to be killed upon game initialization. The higher the difficulty level, the higher the chance of killing an initial unit will be.

Besides, if a faction subjects to initial unit change, then the faction can define several other factions as AI target faction. Faction 1's AI target faction is a faction whose initial unit will have a chance to duplicate itself when faction 1 is controlled by human player. The chance and times of unit duplication varies with faction 1 (the human player)'s difficulty level. If difficulty level is equal to or below noble, then no unit duplication will apply. If difficulty level is above noble, then the duplication chance and times will increase with difficulty level.

Nine Transformation

Some of the historical heroes in the game possess a special ability called 'Nine Transformation'. This is an ability that allows the hero to choose and active the one best suited promotion among a maximum of nine promotions each turn, thus providing a wider strategic space. Heroes who possess this ability will start with one randomly chosen promotion in his nine transformation promotion pool at level 1, and then upon each level up, he will gain another randomly chosen promotion, adding to his own nine transformation promotion pool. He can gain a maximum of nine promotions in this way. The promotions that can be gained in this way will not overlap with promotions that the hero can normally gain through level up.

New Heroes, Promotions and Scenario

In this update we introduced 13 new heroes, including the most famous warlord Cao Cao, 9 new promotions and 1 new scenario: 194AD on 68 * 64 map.

Double the Speed

In a word, the Mod runs at least two times faster than previous release. One of HoTK's scenario, 196AD 68*64, it's speed is a little faster than BTS's AD1000 scenario for the first 90 turns. And because HoTK's scenario will not increase its city number over time, it will be significantly faster than BTS's AD1000 in middle and late game.

Combat Heroes are units who contribute to warfare by attaching to unit and form a multi-units legion.

A Combat Hero has the following stats: Unit Combat Level (melee, mounted, archer, siege and naval), which determines how many units his legion can hold and how strong they would be; Promotions, which are unique to heroes, are given freely to members upon forming legion, can be gained when the hero levels up; Experience, which is gained automatically when his legion members gain experience.

A Combat Hero is either given for free in the start of the game, or recruited with gold over time. As shown in the screen, there are multiple factors that influence the cost of recruitment.

When a hero is attacked, or the unit the hero attached to is defeated, the hero can have a chance to escape, or surrender, or die, the last of which can be disabled as a Game Option.

These nice Hero models made by our 3D artist, Bakuel

When a Combat Hero is on the same plot with own combat units, he can perform Form Legion Mission, which will bring up a new screen.

A Legion should consists of units of the same UnitCombat Type. A Legion cannot hold units more than the hero's related Unit Combat Level, for example, Guan Yu is Level A for Melee Units, so his legion of Melee units has a maximum size of 4. Upon forming a legion, the member will be given a unit combat promotion corresponding to his hero's unit combat level.

A legion Member is either a core troop, to whom the hero attaches to, or a plain members. All members can receive Member Promotions the hero has gained, but only the core troop can receive the hero's Unique Promotion. More on promotions later.

A legion can be regrouped or dismissed. When a legion is empty, the hero will be automatically recreated. A unit can also perform action such as Join Legion and Quit Legion. A "warlord" unit, which is now called 'champions', can join a legion but cannot act as core troop.

There are 80+ new promotions in this release. Half among them are uniquely interesting as they allow players to do things that are never possible before. Promotions are now classified into two part: promotions for normal units, and promotions for heroes, and can be further divided into 5 sub-classes:

1. Single Unit Promotions: all the BTS traditional promotions plus a few more we have introduced in Release 1

2. Unit Combat Promotions (25): these promotions cannot be learned either by units or by heroes. Rather, they are automatically distributed for free when a unit joins a legion. For example, our hero, Guan Yu, is level 4 for Melee Unit Combat, then when a Melee unit joins his legion, the unit will automatically gain Promotion Melee IV

3. Combat Level Promotions (5): heroes can choose these promotions to further increase their respective unit combat level. These promotions can be repetitively learned, but a hero's unit combat level cannot exceeds his predefined maximum level.

4. Unique Promotions (22): These promotions can only be chosen by heroes, and are passed to and only to the unit a hero attached to when forming a legion.

5. Member Promotions (33): These promotions can only be chosen by heroes too, but are passed to the all members of the legion when it is formed.

Note that whenever a legion is regrouped, or the hero gains new promotion, all the members of the legion will update their promotions accordingly.

The AI knows how to use the hero:
1. They know how to accumulate money and spend them recruiting heroes, but they can restrain themselves.
2. They know how to move heroes at different situations, to aid invasion, defend homeland as well as hunting barbarian.
3. They know how and when to form a legion, to choose the best core troop and legion members.
4. They know how and when to regroup legion, in order to bring in fresh blood or change to a better core troop.
5. They know how and when to dismiss legion when the grand situation changes.
6. They know how to level heroes up, and how to choose the best promotions for them.

The AI is also improved in several aspects comparing to the previous release:
1. AI will refuse to become a vassal if the two team are not direct neighbors. A team with emperor or Yuan Shao are not limited by this rule.
2. AI is more likely to choose a city with emperor in it as a target city in war.
3. AI thinks declaring war on an Emperor Team is more profitable now. At the same time, the AI also thinks an emperor team is more powerful, which in turn reduces the chance of weaker AI declaring war on Emperor team.
4. AI will consider their Civilization Trait when deciding whether to go for a Cultural Victory
5. Better BTS AI is updated from 0.45 to 0.60, numerous great changes are included, just pick an easy one here: AI now will improve bonuses in lakes

To help players with the newly added legion system, lots of interface changes are implemented. First, there's a hero panel on the top left of the main interface, which shows all the heroes the current player controls; when clicking on a hero's portrait, the camera will go to the hero himself or cycle through his legion members

Second, on the bottom left of the main interface, each legion unit also displays it's Hero's stats and Legion Member Status. On plot list a core troop is denoted with a star, while champions (former warlords) are denoted with a shield. When you mouse over a Hero, you'll see his unit Combat Levels and promotions too. There's also a new action called Go To Legion that allows to group select all units of same legion on the plot.

Third, in Military Advisor, you could choose to display the Heroes and their Legion Members on the mini map, for fast look up.

Fourth, in the newly added Hero Advisor, apart from the recruitment screen, there's also a screen called Info, which displays a hero's current UnitCombat Level, promotions, legion members, and XP.

We have added more maps and scenarios in Release 2. Here is a complete list including both Release 1 and Release 2:

1. Sanguo 51_51, 196AD scenario
2. Sanguo 51_51, 196AD starting location, no City
3. Sanguo 68_64, 196AD scenario
4. Sanguo 68_64, 196AD starting location, no City
5. Sanguo 81_81, 196AD scenario
6. Sanguo 81_81, 196AD starting location, no City

Addition:
1. added PianXiang Chariot unit
2. added fire MongChong unit
3. added longbowman and elite longbowman unit
4. added XuanFeng Trebuchet unit
5. added metal bureau building

Balance:
1. adjusted tech price and tech prerequisite
2. adjusted few wonders' effect
3. adjusted civic effect

AI:
1. increased AI valuation for DanYang resource (now Sun Ce's palace grants 1 DanYang)

Art:
1. changed the font, button and skin of purebred horse
2. changed botton of multiple units
3. changed unit models of multiple units
4. changed default mouse animation
5. changed Emperor unit model

System:
1. moved code in PythonCallBack to sdk to speed up the game
2. changed 'warlord' unit to 'champions', now they can only attach to units
3. added Game option: NO_SETTLER
4. moved Camp animation code from python to sdk

Better AI 0.80
BUG MOD 3.6
Blue Marble Gold
UI Coal
sez's Civilopedia
Ranged Bombardment (made into promotion)
Influence Driven War (made into promotion)

HoTK Team (in alphabetical order):

Bakuel
Khyron
Koap
stmartin
xxhe

Special Thanks

The BUG Team; jdog5000; ColdFever; Dresden & Solver; asioasioasio; seZereth; Dale; Moctezuma; HrochLand; Rory; Yitoo; Walter Hawkwood; Danrell; Chuggi; Wolfshanze; White Rabbit; Kael; Rhye; Tsentom1; Genghis_Kai; freesand; ztjal; Fog; QiDongYeRen; GuDuDeMouFeng; Dapeng3; Strategyonly; Jimmyballz, and KOEI for its Leaderhead Art.

If we left anyone out, it wasn’t intentional, please let us know and we will include them in the list.