[C3C] Conquests of Might and Magic III (CoMM3 Epic)

[boho]

Some more thoughts: I think the mod really struggles with its early game (T1-T3 units) balance. Considering the expansion phase of Civ3 is by far the most important part of the game, the fact that unit power can vary so wildly during this window of time is downright punitive to some towns.

I've noticed the same towns keep coming out ahead in the game: namely Rampart, Fortress, and Castle, while some towns just can't seem to catch a break: namely Necropolis and Conflux. It's no small coincidence these are the towns with the best - and worst - T1 and T2 units, respectively.

Castle is strong across the board, with its first (and only) "bad" unit being at Tier 5 - so probably 200 turns into a game or more. Fortress is Castle but with a Defense focus, meaning you'll have more Veteran units and Heroes, magnifying that Defense even more. Rampart has the best attacker in T1 and second-best Defender in Tier 2.

Conflux is absolutely pathetic til Tier 2, where it gets a powerhouse unit... which costs twice as much as everybody else's T2. Two Lizardmen Warriors, Marksmen, or Dwarves will usually win that trade, as will 3-4 T1 units from those towns - all of which are the same shield cost.

Necropolis breaks my heart since it's what brought me to the Heroes series to begin with. To be brief, the -1 HP on Skeletons is just too devastating, turning the 6/6 into something more like a 4/5 in the simulator despite costing as much as the 6/5, 4/6, or 6/3/+1 Move. This gets even worse if you make the mistake of unlocking Necromancy, which promises hordes of skeletons but only makes them cost as much as T2 units. Zombies have the opposite problem: they're +1 HP, +2 upgraded, but only 5/5. That's a whole lot of whiffs. It's not til Tier 4 and Vampires that Necropolis seems to show signs of (un)life.

Anyway. I've implemented the no trech trading for Creatures and Creature Upgrade techs, which helped, but I feel like the early game needs tweaking.

 

[boho]

Ok, spitballing some balance stuff:

Necropolis

Skeletons seem tuned to the Heroes 3 standard of getting Skeletons after any victorious combat, not just combats where other Skeletons are victorious. That isn't an option in Civ3 since Enslavement is a by-unit ability. While I'm tempted to remove the HP penalty with Necromancy (since Necromancy kind of sucks as-is), a 6/6 with no HP mod would make Skeleton Warrior Necros the best Tier 1 in the game, which is too much of a swing.

What if Raised Skeletons (the product of Necromancy) lost the HP penalty instead? You'd get a 5/4 that can create more of itself with a 33% chance of doing so per victory, but it's locked behind an extra tech, still outclassed by other fully-upgraded T1s, and can't be directed produced. The 4 Defense means fortifying them in a great defense tile wouldn't make them wildly strong to print units either.

I'm not sure if Zombies need to be touched with this change. They're great walls for the enemy to break themselves on, allowing the buffed skeletons to get killing blows and hopefully Enslaves. While that's already the Necropolis early game design, it's not really working right now due to the current fragility of the skeleton snowball.

Conflux

This one's tougher. Pixies need help - they're basically enslavement and XP pinatas right now and really only serve to help the enemy. They're incredibly cheap, but excess production is wasted in Civ3 - and I don't think many players are willing to min-max it for Pixies.

I'm thinking about giving them a 1 Bombard attack (Range 1, ROF 1). They're still fragile as hell, but this at least lets them "kite" the enemy around like their big sister Sprites can right out of the gate, and bloody the nose of most un-upgraded T1s. The AI probably can't use them, but honestly Pixies defend their cities by heaping their corpses in front of the gates anyway.

Sprites are a bit more of a challenge. They're still cheap, and 2 Bombard is a notable upgrade, but the AI still can't really use them. I see two routes: remove the -1 HP or bump their Defense Str to 3. Due to the low Defense value, the bump to 3 Defense is possibly stronger than an extra HP due to how Defense modifiers work. They still employ the corpse wall strategy (I envision the wall of corpses from 300, except it's fairies), but at least they might kill something before it produces a free Hero unit.

The Air/Storm elementals are probably just overpriced. Instead of 2x the cost of another city's T2 unit, I'm thinking closer to 1.75x. That turns the 2:1 into more like a 3:2 in situations where Conflux can rapidly reinforce and regroup.

"Overpowered" Towns

To be brief, I don't really want to nerf anything stat-wise. COMM3 Castle is accurate to HOMM3 Castle and I love that. The only place I'd consider tuning things down (or, rather, up) is in unit price, to more accurately reflect how HOMM3 approached balance. For instance, Griffins are remarkably plentiful. They were quite strong in HOMM3 as well, but you weren't exactly rolling in them like Castle can in COMM3. Their price may need to be turned up, as well as the number of turns between free spawns.

edit: After a couple more games I think some gentle tuning on Castle's T1 is inevitable. Pikemen are 4/5 and Halberdiers are 6/5. I'll likely be tuning them down to 4/4 and 5/5 to see if Castle continues to run away with every game.

Also, personal preference, but it's counter-intuitive and hurts my brain to see Sand (Desert), Swamp, and Marsh have equal or higher defense than Rough (Hills) or Forest. With the high defense values, penalty terrain needs to, well, be penalty terrain. I'd also like to see mountains become impassable for anything but Workers and Scouts until a road is on them to increase their strategic and tactical value, but idk if that's possible in Civ3.

 

[boho]

Anybody know how Tom got the game options to be uneditable when creating a new game?

 

[tjs282]

I'd also like to see mountains become impassable for anything but Workers and Scouts until a road is on them to increase their strategic and tactical value, but idk if that's possible in Civ3.

The brute-force approach here would be to make Mountains "Impassable to Wheeled" (as they already are in the epic-game), and then give every unit the "Wheeled" flag except the Workers and Scouts.

 

[boho]

The brute-force approach here would be to make Mountains "Impassable to Wheeled" (as they already are in the epic-game), and then give every unit the "Wheeled" flag except the Workers and Scouts.

Awesome, thanks. I got a great map with some really cool valley choke points that was foiled by the fact you can wander right over mountains with zero effort (and indeed are actually at a massive advantage when you do so as you enjoy a 40% defender bonus).

 

[Civinator]

Anybody know how Tom got the game options to be uneditable when creating a new game?

In the Scenario Properties register he disabled the Default Victory Conditions and the Default Game Rules boxes.

 

[register]

@Civinator

Downloaded this mod over the weekend to check any interesting features I could add to my mod and noticed that if you pick Tower civ for instance, it has unique type of government assigned to it, which is forced to use at the start of a first turn.
Do you know where in editor is that option which allows me to do that?

 

[Arexander]

That's part of their unique techs that they all start with, they can only use the government if they have the tech, and the techs are assigned to the civs as starting techs in the editor. Though you also need to set them to be non-tradable so the techs stay unique.

 

[boho]

Is there any good way to diagnose crashes in Civ3? I've got a decent game going but it started to get unstable around turn 220. Standard size map so I can't imagine it's any limit being hit.

 

[register]

That's part of their unique techs that they all start with, they can only use the government if they have the tech, and the techs are assigned to the civs as starting techs in the editor. Though you also need to set them to be non-tradable so the techs stay unique.

I have that, at the start unique techs are assigned to civs but I have to call for revolution to be able to run unique government.

 

[boho]

I think tech cost (and research time) may need to be reduced. So far every game I’ve finished has ended with level 4 upgraded creatures at most. I don’t want to stretch out Domination longer since 30% of the world’s terrain and population is more than enough to turn the rest of the map into cleanup anyway.

Right now it’s at an awkward spot where matches are ending pretty much precisely when they should (since past 30% it just gets exponentially more difficult to manage), but simultaneously half the mod is never seen as a result.

 

[Civinator]

I have that, at the start unique techs are assigned to civs but I have to call for revolution to be able to run unique government.

In this mod all civs are starting in Anarchy, as Anarchy here is additionally set as default government type. With this setting no "call for revolution" is needed.

 

[register]

Cheers

 

[Miniskirt]

Has anyone ever managed to build Armageddon's Blade? I have tried but it will not let me build all of the components. And the game often crashes in the Spaceship screen. Often. I still can't believe the poor error handling in all Civ games.

I have managed to build the A.B. advance, and the Small Wonder: Visionary Dreams, both are PQs for building the components. I have built 2 of the 10 necessary components. None of the other components are assignable to be built. The game crashes if I try to launch with incomplete components. The 2 components I managed to build are: Search For The Forgesmith and Seeking Armageddon.

It took me forever to figure out how make even the progress I did make.

 

[Arexander]

A lot of the components need rare strategic resources to build, are you sure you have all of the needed resources? A lot of them also need to be built in the same city as some other components, so keep an eye out for that as well. In addition to these, not all components are unlocked at the same time, they are scattered over the late-game research tree in separate advances, so you might need to research further to be able to progress in the victory. The Civilopedia has all of this information available in the form of a page for the whole Armageddon's Blade victory in the Game Concepts, and each individual component's building page tells you its requirements and what it unlocks.

 

[Miniskirt]

Yeah yeah yeah yeah, thanks. done done and also done. I literally have everything, every strategic resource and the ones listed for the A.B. components. I have the whole world, allowing one enemy city to remain and it controls no resources. Just trying to make the A.B. happen. Of course, if the program did not crash in the Spaceship Screen so often this would be less frustrating. If I make this happen I shall report back, but close to giving up, one final look around.

Has anyone managed to build Armageddon's Blade?

it has been so long since I built a Spaceship at all in Civ, does the Spaceship screen F10 normally crash often for people? Or is that just this mod? Which is otherwise Excellent.

 

[tjs282]

it has been so long since I built a Spaceship at all in Civ, does the Spaceship screen F10 normally crash often for people?

Yes. And not just the ship-screen. (On the increasingly rare occasion that I actually finish a game on my Win8.1 box) I often get freezes/crashes/ "This program has stopped responding"-popups just trying to move through the 3-4 end-game screens. Pressing Escape to skip these screens rather than mouse-clicking on the "X" seems to help.

This problem seems to be connected to newer Windoze versions and/or the GOG download version, because it doesn't happen nearly as often on our old WinXP laptop.

 

[Civinator]

Yes, the Civ 3 technical support forum at CFC is full with those reports.

 

[Traex]

I'll give this a shot later as I also play/played HoMM3.

 

[Miniskirt]

I am going to declare it impossible to build Armageddon's Blade in this otherwise excellent Mod. I could have finished half a new game in the amount of time I spent on this. I have at least 5 of all possible strategic resources. All listed PQs, considering I have every Advance. I looked over the BIQ, it seems okay. Maybe a specific city needs to build the next item, AB: Gathering The Resources (or similar name). Thought I almost had this figured out a couple of times especially when I was able to complete a PQ or Component! I built a ton of extra Improvements on the off chance I needed "nine Archeries to be able to start Component" or such. The instability of Civ makes this even more ridiculous to continue looking into. I think the only reason I tried to complete A.B. is that I was writing up a review of sorts of the Mod. Harrumph and bah humbug!

It is time to finally crush those pesky Avlee/Green/Rampart Town people, down to a 2 square island with a city bombed to the stone age. They had a hundred turn reprieve maybe about. A few catapult shots then can probably just walk in and take it.

I would love to be proven wrong and someone manages to build Armageddon's Blade. A specialist in a BIQ's Space Race should take a look. Thanks to anyone who looked into this issue!