Heroes Mod

[FredMB]

Hello Everyone

This is my first Mod, well the first one I felt was worth publishing. Gamespy and the modhub are playing tricks on me with my Mod being denied and all so I decided to post it here first.

Heroes v1

== Description ==

Barbarians are on the rise, intent on destroying all civilized mankind as we know it. Can your heroes rise up against the barbarians and conquer the world?
In this Mod you're only allowed to have one unit of each kind. Your units never go obsolete and never upgrade. Instead you are rewarded by keeping
your units alive and making them triumph in battle.

Being true heroes, they get stronger and stronger as they gain more and more levels. As time goes on your old units will eventually grow to be as strong and even
stronger than modern era units. This is also done through the building of several "Upgrade Shops", one for each era. Can your medieval era heroes teach modern
era units a lesson in the art of war? Yes, they can! Just make sure you keep them alive though. Without any combat experience a new unit will always be superior
to an old one. Only by gaining combat experience and staying alive can your old units keep up!

Your civilization's first test of might will be to repel the barbarian invaders. At first you will only have enough units to defend your small empire.
As time goes on more units will be made available to you and eventually you'll be able to take the fight right to their camps. Don't expect an easy fight
though, barbarian camps act like fortresses now and can only be taken down using ranged units and siege weapons. Or you can go the easy way, settle a city
nearby and let your borders do all the work. But that wouldn't be much fun, now would it?

I have attached a readme and a PDF file to the post with a lot more details. In the readme you'll find more details about: UI Updates, Art Updates, Recommended Settings, How It All Works, Era Upgrades, Nemesis Units, Barbarians, Modifier File, Other Changes, Other Recommended Mods, Potential Mod Conflicts, Issues and Bugs, Version History and Credits. In the PDF file you'll find a table of all the units and their relative strength depending of what era they've been upgraded to.

The key to this Mod being enjoyable will be balance. Barbarians, Hero units, Nemesis units, upgrading and leveling up, etc... I've done as much balancing as I can and now it's time to gather input from other players to see what they think. The AI will also need a lot of work, hopefully most of it can be done through adjusting leader flavors and the like.

So you folks post any questions and comments you might have and hopefully we can all contribute to this mod and make it as enjoyable as possible.

 

[mutant-enemy]

This certainly sounds - well, I think "epic" would match here. I'm already looking forward to letting my warrior Beowulf kill some evil steel monsters (tanks).

 

[philomelus]

Well now, this looks very interesting. Heroes is something I've been looking for (yes, I'm aware of other mods with 'em), and this is a fresh take. I love the building promotions, as that is one of the things that really bugs me in vanilla.

Will try a game shortly and report back.

Thanks for the effort!

 

[jenks]

certainly an interesting concept, I imagine barbarian camps being able to flood continents before humans
ill be having a play when I get back online

 

[FredMB]

Hello Everyone

I've attached a screen shot of how this Mod is supposed to go down. I apologize for the poor quality, I used a funky TGA converter. The end game is usually Epic. Here you can see Alexander fielding a large military with pretty much all the units that are available to him.

Still working on making the AI more aggressive in the Mid Game though. In this particular game all Bismark ever did was build his capital and one pikeman. When I invaded with my army he took his pikeman out on a walk to escort a settler. Idiot.

Caesar was a more worthy opponent later on. He fielded a large army but failed to form any sort of front. I took his units out one by one.

Alexander however seemed to get it. He expanded really early. Got rid of his barbarian problem easily. He was also ahead in military tech research. In the late game he declared war on me and the screen shot was during the most intense part of it. He had every unit available to him and even lined them up in a somewhat coherent manner. Up to that point I hadn't lost a single unit. This changed quickly. I still won by taking his capital but he definitely put up a good fight.

Working on V2 and will post suggested changes shortly. Feedback from anyone that gave this a try will be most appreciated.

 

[FredMB]

Below is a list of changes that I implemented for V2. I'm still looking for proper replacements for wonders that gave bonuses to unit maintenance and unit upgrades.

I'm also looking for proper names for the upgrade shops, preferably names of famous production facilities through the ages. Leonardo's Workshop comes to mind, not very original, but would do it.

Spoiler :

V2 - Revamped the base system so that old units are more useful in the modern eras when destroyed and rebuilt without any promotions.
- Unit Promotions now give 1 extra base point instead of 2 (for base 3 units).
- With the new changes a level 10 warrior will still have a strength of 62 but if he dies and is rebuilt he will now be at 52 instead of 42.
- The Lancer was modified to fall in line with Anti-Mounted / Anti-Tank family instead of Mounted / Armor family.
- The Ironclad now has the same promotions as the destroyer so you have two sub hunting units.
- Barbarians are back to full strength. AI bonus has been increased to 300% to compensate.
- Barbarian strength now uses same base system as normal units. This was done to prevent city states from giving you 100+ strength swordsmen in the future era.
- Barbarian camps down to 1200% to compensate for slower level strength gains.
- Unit cost set at 60% up from 10%. This change only affects the player for now.
- AI unit production cost down to 30% (of 60%).
- AI flavors modified to ensure the AI keeps a much larger standing army. This doesn't seem to work for all leaders.
- AI flavors modified for Warrior to stay at home instead of wandering off to explore. Doesn't work so much, still suicidal vs camps.
- Boosted city health to 40. Hero units still do plenty of damage, taking a city only take a couple more turns.
- Gave a free monument to all city states to help promote border expansion. Most city states didn't seem to build monuments.
- Policies modified as follows:
- Honor: Barbarian bonus is now 100% (1 base) (was 25%).
- Professional Army: 25% military production boost (was 50% diminished upgrade cost).
- Total War: Combat Bonus is now 100% (was 33%).
- Populism: Combat Bonus now 100% (was 33%).
- Autocracy: 25% military production boost (was 33% less unit maintenance cost).
- The Pentagon now gives defensive buildings an extra 25% boost (was 50% less unit upgrade cost).

== Credits ==

Forgot to mention Lemmy101 for his Remapper.sql in the readme. Without it this Mod would crash each time a save game is loaded.

 

[KingKeeper]

I tried the Mod as Bismark and found some strange things:
When i razed a Barbcamp i got the Brute (STR3 Move 1) but i could found Citys with this Brutes. Once i also got a Archer from the Camp (Normal STR but only Move 1). Well and Bismark is OP in this Mod as he get way more troops then others, maybe change his UA to only Money or so.
Ranged Heroes are pretty strong as they get the same XP as Melee Troops and can farm on Barb-Camps without the need of Healthregen.
Also its a pitty that the Scout is so strong, as Barbs never attack them anymore, so no XP for this Guys.

But the Idea of the Mod is nice, keep it up

 

[FredMB]

I tried the Mod as Bismark and found some strange things:
When i razed a Barbcamp i got the Brute (STR3 Move 1) but i could found Citys with this Brutes. Once i also got a Archer from the Camp (Normal STR but only Move 1). Well and Bismark is OP in this Mod as he get way more troops then others, maybe change his UA to only Money or so.
Ranged Heroes are pretty strong as they get the same XP as Melee Troops and can farm on Barb-Camps without the need of Healthregen.
Also its a pitty that the Scout is so strong, as Barbs never attack them anymore, so no XP for this Guys.

But the Idea of the Mod is nice, keep it up

Thanks for the feedback. LOL about the brutes. The found city ability is a leftover from an old experiment of mine in which I tried to have barbarians found cities. I took that out now.

I didn't think of Bismark's ability, neither did I think of Suleiman's, I'll look into those. I may leave them as is. The issue is the same with Militaristic city states, they'll usually gift you barb units since your unit classes are all full. I left the barbarians with only 1 move to prevent the horde from moving in too fast. At some point the camps can generate one barb every turn, if they had full moves it could be quite overwhelming. Even with only 1 move for barbs the AI gets it's settlers and workers captured all the time.

I agree that ranged heroes might me somewhat overpowered with the same XP as the others. I'm going to tone down the XP a bit, hopefully this doesn't cripple the early game too much.

As for the scouts I made them stronger so they wouldn't die all the time. I found that even at the current strength barbarians will often surround the scout and then all attack at once. That's six attacks to repel in one turn. This usually gives a lot of XP. I might tone down the strength and give a defensive bonus instead. The AI doesn't seem to consider those.