Conquests of Might and Magic III

[tom2050]

ha, my game crashed when i click on on a strategic resource on a horse to see i guess not allow to click

I'll have to check and see which that is. The resources haven't been completed yet, I will try to get the strategic and luxuries done at least, but there are alot of bonus resources that will take some time.

one word i love this mod

Thank you... and if you have any suggestions about any aspect of it at all, let me know!

I notcied that the capitol of the Dungeon faction had *** for a name?

Since the Dungeon's capitol name was unknown, that was a placeholder, I have changed it to 'Dungeon Capitol'. Thanks for the reminder!

I got the usual crash on game end, seems to be a Win7 thing for me. Anyway I only say the screen were they show all the leaders beat up.

Those leaders were the normal civ leaders, not nay from CoMM.

I started to do those, but wanted to make them a bit more unique than kisses and bruises, which don't work well with the cities. I was going to make the cities appearance change, such as a burning city (of the appropriate civ) for the losers and a rich city for a winner, etc. I probably won't be able to get this done for the civilopedia update on the way though.

Wow, five pages in four days, and this is the first opportunity I've had to comment. I wanted to commend you on your interface, as no one else has mentioned it. It's really beautiful. While I understand that you were just trying to duplicate the game's original graphics, your choices and design for it are superior. If all you'd done was that, I'd be impressed.

IMHO, the problem you're having with seeing units against the terrain isn't because the terrains are colorful or complicated - it's because they're too contrasty. Try turning the contrast down on your terrains (simple, right?) and see if that helps.

Thanks.. yes, I was trying to keep it familiar with original graphics. I'll have to test out some terrain changes with bringing the saturation/contrast down to the right level. I think over the last year, I have just gotten accustomed to it and didn't realize how contrasty it actually was! It actually completely hides units on some terrains as mentioned.. mountains, etc...

Yeah the mountains are the worst for hiding units. Also the 'rough' terrian is it? The forrests a bit too.

Do many units have charm attacks? Any spells? Charm doesn't work for cruise missiles but does for air units right?

I think just a little bigger for cities would do the trick.

Agreed... you can't see certain units very well like imps. Actually it's somewhat tough to see imps when they are sitting in the Inferno city. When I redo the cities I will fix the terrain as well. I think you are right about the city sizes, and that way I can make all the city sizes proportionate to each other.

I have updated the pedia to which units have charm, and they are primarily air unit spells that have that. Since AI doesn't use artillery, I left that out. No, charm doesn't work for cruise missiles, which is a major bummer!

 

[tom2050]

The 'City Defenses' improvement seems a little redundant becuase Fort, Citidel etc give defensive bonuses anyway and they don't stack, as I'm sure your aware. It does also give the bombard defensive of course but this could be given to the fort etc.

I think I remember now the reason I did not do this. If I give the Fort the 'Walls' ability; this means it will act just like Walls do.

When a town becomes a city, it can no longer build the Walls improvement. The Fort is pretty much required to build alot of improvements, so having a town become a city, and no longer being able to build the Fort would not work so well.

I've went ahead and just reduced the cost of this building... so it gives a small defensive bonus, and can be used for a quick build if there are barbs nearby, or to have before a Fort can be built.

 

[Kyriakos]

Wow, everything looks amazing!

 

[nick0515]

I think I remember now the reason I did not do this. If I give the Fort the 'Walls' ability; this means it will act just like Walls do.

When a town becomes a city, it can no longer build the Walls improvement. The Fort is pretty much required to build alot of improvements, so having a town become a city, and no longer being able to build the Fort would not work so well.

I've went ahead and just reduced the cost of this building... so it gives a small defensive bonus, and can be used for a quick build if there are barbs nearby, or to have before a Fort can be built.

Oh yeah, didn't think of that. Perhaps it's not necessary to have the building at all. But what you have done sounds fine too. So what is it that makes it disapear for city size 2 and 3 is it any building that has a bombard defense or is it one that has both bombard defense and defensive bonus for units?

 

[tom2050]

Wow, everything looks amazing!

Thanks Kyriakos

Oh yeah, didn't think of that. Perhaps it's not necessary to have the building at all. But what you have done sounds fine too. So what is it that makes it disapear for city size 2 and 3 is it any building that has a bombard defense or is it one that has both bombard defense and defensive bonus for units?

It's any building that has an Air/Land Bombard Defense value put in for a building. I'm not sure what happens if a civ can build 2 or more buildings with this value put in; I would guess they both 'disappear' when a town becomes a city. IIRC, this is the building that is destroyed first from air or land bombardment (just like coastal fortress is with sea bombardment).

Having several of these buildings in a scenario could provide multiple layers of bombardment defense, giving the look of multiple defenses being taken down. I suppose if 1 of them is built, the walls graphic would continue to show.

 

[tom2050]

V1.10 has been put up on the 1st post as well as a Patch to download.

Download the patch and the updated v1.10 BIQ file, and extract them both. Copy and Paste the BIQ file and the COMM3 folder into your Civilization III/Conquests/Scenarios directory. Overwrite all files to update to the latest version 1.10.

This fixes many issues and gets the civilopedia a bit more up to speed.

V1.10 Changes - Conquests of Might and Magic III
------------------------------------------------

Spoiler :

Make floodplains disease stop at Pathfinding tech for all civ's!
Fixed Grail Structures Capitalization problem
make armies per city 4 instead of 2
re-entered Barb tribe names (names of Antagrich)
cities grow quickly early on, give palace happiness to all cities to quell civil disorder. Palace produces Magic Arrow every 35 turns instead of 30
Create a ship that doesn't require any resources for pangea/continent maps. Make it weak and cheap. (added boat)
Make Palace Magic Arrow less powerful (bombard to 3)
Take Plague out (Plague removed)
Fix Town Defense improvement (added walls graphic and civilopedia entry)
Scout entry fixed
Lower swamp disease to 5%
Upgrade cost lowered from 4 to 3
Fix Aqudects2 and 3: updated to and Added Well and Water Reservoir
1,000,000 VP is not going to be likely. 50,000 culture for a town or 500,000 for empire in a std map, not much of a shot. (adjusted these values down)
Added railway for Might side
Counterstrike, seems to chew up the low level units, even defense 6 skels. That would be alright, except they seem to come often from the Royal Griffons. Those units will get into a lot of action as they are auto every week and 2 moves with 9/9. (Fixed)
Increased range of Dimension Door, Teleport, and Town Portal.
Town Portal is like a transport aircraft, and is set to airdrop, it should be set to airlift also. Is also set to pick up foot units only, it should be all. Foot units are flying units in the game. (Set to lift all units; Dimension Door and Teleport also).
Worker task Spell Tower says airfield as well. Fixed this and other worker job titles.
make might and magic a bit more linear to force player to go down 1 or the other? YES
add reduce corruption to some buildings (city hall and mage guild 5)
Corrected Lvl 7 costs and upgrade costs
The 'City Defenses' improvement seems a little redundant becuase Fort, Citidel etc give defensive bonuses anyway and they don't stack, as I'm sure your aware. It does also give the bombard defensive of course but this could be given to the fort etc. (give to Fort) <- has been altered to make improvement cheaper, cannot give this to Fort
Get rid of all horde and upgrade Lvl 1 and 2 buildings (done)
Fix values for Level 1 and 2 upgrades at bottom of the list (ERASED)
Add civilopedia what buildings do upgrades. (added to main info page)
Make all horde buildings require a resource within city radius? YES
Archangels cough up a Swordsman and I thought a counterstrike was strong. For some reason the game put up the spawned sword over and over, till it died. Then put up the archangel. (Added seperate Reserructed Swordsman)
Added a Raised Demon unit enslaved by Pit Lord
Partial number of resources fixed or added in civilopedia
Get rid of links to buildings that were removed (upgraded buildings)
tech blurbs added for many (not all) technologies
changed roads graphic and added railroad graphics
city graphics enlarged
Corrected Resurrection, Animate Dead, and Clone spells
A variety of other minor changes done.

 

[vmxa]

Yeoman effort Tom and here I thought I would have time to finish MM7, before you made an update.

 

[nick0515]

Trying the new version. L1 buildings still show up when you look at the tech even though removed. Also there is a building called 'hovel' under L1 tech that links to 'Homestead'. Is L1 just an empty tech now?

EDIT: I'm a bit confused now. The L1 buildings seem to be still in, at least for the Inforno. What exactly does "Get rid of all horde and upgrade Lvl 1 and 2 buildings (done)" mean?

EDIT 2: It may of been like this already and I didn't notice, but are you supposed to be able to research level 3 to level 7 techs once you have researched level 2? Doesn't this mean that people will just go for Level 7 straight away and skip the other levels? Does the AI research the techs Level 3 to Level 6 or just go straight for the most powerful creatures?

EDIT 3: "Demon King, Daemon Gate has produced..." Maybe you should make the spelling of D(a)emon the same for everything. Though doesn't really matter especially if it's just that one city name. Personally I quite like the spelling with the 'a'.

 

[tom2050]

Trying the new version. L1 buildings still show up when you look at the tech even though removed. Also there is a building called 'hovel' under L1 tech that links to 'Homestead'. Is L1 just an empty tech now?

EDIT: I'm a bit confused now. The L1 buildings seem to be still in, at least for the Inforno. What exactly does "Get rid of all horde and upgrade Lvl 1 and 2 buildings (done)" mean?

I couldn't exactly delete all buildings because a large majority of higher level buildings require the level 1 or 2 buildings as a pre-requisite (in HoMM3 at least). I decided not to go the length of deleting all Level 1 and 2 buildings because often level 3 and higher buildings require these. So the base buildings are left, and the upgraded buildings were deleted.

The horde buildings (Ex. Cages for Inferno is a horde building) were made to require a resource within city radius to be built. This should cut down on units built. If still too many units after testing, I will then up the auto-production times by a bit for everything.

So Level 1 Creatures provides the Level 1 buildings, whereas Level 1 Upgrades provides the ability to build the upgraded creature. Same with Level 2.

The hovel is a building of the neutral civ that auto-produce peasants IIRC (you probably don't want to build this , being peasants cost 5 shields and are 1.1.1). Neutral civ is not 'complete' yet, as there are probably things that still need to be added. If you are playing as the neutral civ, not every tech has something, because there are not upgraded neutral creatures, I used what was available and did my best to fill all the techs.

I will update these as I continue to finalize the civilopedia.

The Might and Magic trees were made more linear with more powerful techs at the end. Might gives railroad at the Tactics Tech. Magic gives Town Portal, Dimension Door, and Teleport spells for mobility.

Grail buildings are fixed and working.

Resurrection, Clone, and Animate Dead Spells were changed. To use these spells, they must be used in a battle. They have nill defense, and low attack, but if they win they can enslave a unit that can be upgraded to a high level creatue. With care, they can be powerful.

I will put in the ability with next update so spells like haste, stone skin, etc.. can be used on Level 2 creatures to make them more powerful in a specific way.

Hope it all makes sense! A good overview for each town type (castle, inferno, etc) can be found on each unit by the Town Type: <link> section. I hope to add some additional stuff there to make finding stuff a bit easier.

 

[Kyriakos]

Tom, where did you take the city art from?
I could use some of these as inspiration

 

[nick0515]

Ah now I get it, though what does 'horde building' mean? I take it it's a term from HoMM3?

How about my second edit above, Tom? It seems a little strange to me that Level 7 creatures tech can be researched so soon.

 

[vmxa]

It does not matter that you research L7 ahead of some of the lower ones as most have a building required from lower level creatures. Portal of Glorfy needs the Monks. So you will need to go back to research the lower levels anyway.

 

[stachnie]

First of all: great work! It made me to switch back from C4 BtS to C3C

I have started a game with 1.01 patch; it had to be an easy one so I started at the 2nd difficulty level as my favourite HOMM3 race - Castle.

My impressions about Castle units: Pikemen are very good defensive units, Halberdiers are a good all purpose unit, Archers are rather weak but Marksmen are very powerful with their two ranged attacks, especially after Might-Archery is discovered. Griffins and Crusaders seem to be solid 3rd and 4th level but Zaelots turned out to be a disappointment - Marksmen seem to be more effective.

About AI: perhaps it is a result of a low difficulty level but AI is very stupid. Fortress opponent built a lot of shooters (AFAIR Lizardmen and Lizard Warriors) but never used their shots - always as melee. I have not seen any higher level AI units but AI seems to be crazy about building heroes and puts its research in that direction (no Might, no Magic, no Other). Castle opponent turned out to be even more stupid - I captured two their cities and razed a few other ones (they did not fit to my OCP pattern) but I have not seen any Archers or Marksmen - only Pikemen, initial wave of Halberdiers and lone Heroes easily dispatched by my troops.

Shooters in an army cannot shoot - is it by purpose?

Workers are very cheap so it is very easy to make ethnic cleansing in captured cities (my favourite Civ3 strategy to avoid flipping back) - do not allow them to grow and build only workers until size 1.

I will abandon my game, install recent patch and start at a higher difficulty level.


Best regards,

Slawomir Stachniewicz.

 

[tom2050]

Tom, where did you take the city art from?
I could use some of these as inspiration

The cities are the original Heroes of Might and Magic III city graphics. Heroes 4 Might and Magic has some additional city graphics that might be inspiring also.

Ah now I get it, though what does 'horde building' mean? I take it it's a term from HoMM3?

How about my second edit above, Tom? It seems a little strange to me that Level 7 creatures tech can be researched so soon.

Sorry, the horde building was a Heroes III term. It was used to describe by some (not all though) the 'extra' creature producing improvements in some towns (above and beyond the regular and upgraded improvements). I suppose it is named that because it can horde creatures or you can build a horde of them.

vmxa is correct in what he stated below, you have to follow the requirements in order to build the level 7, which is different from town to town. I will add an piece in the civilopedia to show this more easily (because it's tough to see looking in the tech tree).

It does not matter that you research L7 ahead of some of the lower ones as most have a building required from lower level creatures. Portal of Glorfy needs the Monks. So you will need to go back to research the lower levels anyway.

My impressions about Castle units: Pikemen are very good defensive units, Halberdiers are a good all purpose unit, Archers are rather weak but Marksmen are very powerful with their two ranged attacks, especially after Might-Archery is discovered. Griffins and Crusaders seem to be solid 3rd and 4th level but Zaelots turned out to be a disappointment - Marksmen seem to be more effective.

That sounds about right compared to original Heroes MM 3. Zealots never seemed to be quite as good as a group of Marksmen. Crusaders though, were always a force to be reckoned with because of their double strike (I'm pretty sure they should have blitz ability). I'm not at my computer, so I can't check (and can't remember either!), but if Zealots have only 1 speed, this could cause the difference because a unit's chance to retreat greatly increases it's survival.

About AI: perhaps it is a result of a low difficulty level but AI is very stupid. Fortress opponent built a lot of shooters (AFAIR Lizardmen and Lizard Warriors) but never used their shots - always as melee. I have not seen any higher level AI units but AI seems to be crazy about building heroes and puts its research in that direction (no Might, no Magic, no Other). Castle opponent turned out to be even more stupid - I captured two their cities and razed a few other ones (they did not fit to my OCP pattern) but I have not seen any Archers or Marksmen - only Pikemen, initial wave of Halberdiers and lone Heroes easily dispatched by my troops.

Yes, it is 1 of the bugs that continues to haunt Civ 3. AI rarely uses land artillery. We can still only hope they release the source code some day. I actually made the bombardment of all units much weaker than what it was originally because of this. Same with Armies, they are made to allow only 1 unit to load into them, because of the AI problems with using Armies.

I did some fixing with AI Flavors (which pushes AI to research tech's) so AI will research the paths better. I still need to test it and make sure it is up to par and working the best it can. The actual Heroes (that the AI tends to only build later in game) is a problem, and I am still trying to figue out a way to correct it.

When testing I put it on Expert most often, and the AI usually does a pretty good job there because it can research faster. But the info is important, helps me to know where problems are!

Shooters in an army cannot shoot - is it by purpose?

Workers are very cheap so it is very easy to make ethnic cleansing in captured cities (my favourite Civ3 strategy to avoid flipping back) - do not allow them to grow and build only workers until size 1.

I will abandon my game, install recent patch and start at a higher difficulty level.

The Army shooter side effect is another downside of hardcoding!

Once units load into an army, only certain abilities of the unit are kept, and bombardment is unfortunately not one of them. I will make note to add this info into the civilopedia page for next update (because I often forget which ones stay and which ones don't myself!).

There is no culture flipping in this mod... I took it out because it is viewed as a bit broken. It's tough to lose a whole army of units from a random chance flip!

Thank you all for great feedback!

 

[nick0515]

About AI: perhaps it is a result of a low difficulty level but AI is very stupid. Fortress opponent built a lot of shooters (AFAIR Lizardmen and Lizard Warriors) but never used their shots - always as melee. I have not seen any higher level AI units but AI seems to be crazy about building heroes and puts its research in that direction (no Might, no Magic, no Other). Castle opponent turned out to be even more stupid - I captured two their cities and razed a few other ones (they did not fit to my OCP pattern) but I have not seen any Archers or Marksmen - only Pikemen, initial wave of Halberdiers and lone Heroes easily dispatched by my troops.

Re the AI not using shooters. Unfortunately the AI is not really able to use units with a bombard (shooting) ability unless it is just like an artillery unit with no attack and defense. Even then they can't really use artillery properly. It was never programmed right in the first place. So units with this ability will be used by the AI just like any other unit. The only benefit the AI gets from them is the defensive bombardment, ie. taking a shot at an attacker when in a defending stack of units.

EDIT: Crosspost with Tom.

 

[vmxa]

Zealots have 2 moves. I am fairly sure the Crusader does not have blitz.

 

[stachnie]

Once units load into an army, only certain abilities of the unit are kept, and bombardment is unfortunately not one of them.

O.K., so it is necessary to remember that.

There is no culture flipping in this mod...

Yes, I have noticed that already. And that Archery is not required to lethal bombardment. BTW: it seems that Great Generals (or however they are called in Civ3) may spawn only after melee fight - is it true?


Best regards,

Slawomir Stachniewicz.

 

[tom2050]

The only benefit the AI gets from them is the defensive bombardment, ie. taking a shot at an attacker when in a defending stack of units.

EDIT: Crosspost with Tom.

Yes, that is good point nick. the defensive bombard is really the only advantage AI gets.

Zealots have 2 moves. I am fairly sure the Crusader does not have blitz.

Yes, so although Zealots have 12 attack and 2 moves, they do not have blitz like Marksmen. Marksmen can be used to bombard first and attack with their 2nd move. A group of Marksmen working together can be quite deadly doing this. Zealots will have better chances of winning a combat than Marksman, but they are much rarer.

I just checked on Crusaders, they do have blitz; and the Swordsman do not.

O.K., so it is necessary to remember that.

Yes, I have noticed that already. And that Archery is not required to lethal bombardment. BTW: it seems that Great Generals (or however they are called in Civ3) may spawn only after melee fight - is it true?

Yes, units that have bombardment, always have it from the start. They have it as they had it in HoMM3. A few additions were made for creatures like Cerberus and Harpy Hag which could strike with no retaliation, etc.. these were given bombard to mimic this ability.

All units have lethal land bombard except for the Ballista. I initially did this so Ballista could have a higher bombard factor; but it's unfortunate AI cannot take advantage of it!

There are no leaders in this mod. But Armies are still in (labeled Heroes). You must have a successful combat with an elite land unit for a chance to create an Army (Hero). Once this happens, you need to have a successful combat with the Army. Once this happens you can build the Tavern, Thieves' Guild, Tavern of Might, and Tavern of Magic. These allow for additional Armies. Also, the tech Leadership will allow improvement to build more Armies.

Armies are limited to carrying 1 unit.

The patch I posted has much of the missing portions of the civilopedia completed. So most all immediate information for what improvements, units and spells do should be included now.

Unfortunately, I couldn't mirror Heroes of Might and Magic like I would have preferred to. Making archery give units the ability of better bombardment power is possible, but it would require an enormous amount of extra units to be added to take all the possiblities into account. It's just how it is with Civ 3

Right now, Archery provides ability to make extra Arrow Towers for your towns for protection... but I could possibly make Archery include the ability to auto-produce the appropriate ranged unit of each town every so often as well (to give the tech some offensive teeth as well).

Hope that clears some of the things up a bit... I have taken notes and will add this information for things to do on next update.

 

[tom2050]

EDIT 2: It may of been like this already and I didn't notice, but are you supposed to be able to research level 3 to level 7 techs once you have researched level 2? Doesn't this mean that people will just go for Level 7 straight away and skip the other levels? Does the AI research the techs Level 3 to Level 6 or just go straight for the most powerful creatures?

To be honest, I am not quite sure yet if AI researches the right tech's according to the improvement requirements ??

I know that they often research Lvl 1, Lvl 1 Upgrade, Lvl 2, Lvl 2 Upgrade, but after that I am not certain. I have started a debug game to watch AI to make certain the flavors work better now that they have been tweaked for v1.10.

The only thing I might need to change with Flavors is to add a flavor to make sure AI researches creatures at a rate appropriate to everything else.

If AI does go straight for Level 7 tech first, it could be a minor problem in making the AI not able to keep up in terms of creature strength.

EDIT 3: "Demon King, Daemon Gate has produced..." Maybe you should make the spelling of D(a)emon the same for everything. Though doesn't really matter especially if it's just that one city name. Personally I quite like the spelling with the 'a'.

I got the city names from HoMM3 itself by going through all the games and campaigns. I personally like Daemon better myself, but that was just how they spelled that particular city.

 

[nick0515]

In my current game the AI seems to have gone for L1/L1 upgrade, L2/L2 upgrade as you said. Then at least one other civ has gone for Might and Magic which I traded for.

Is there any reason why the Level 3 - 7 isn't a linear progression? From what you said there is no reason to research ahead anyway as the creature structures are in a linear progression in terms of building required to build them. Or is it just some structures that require previous level structures?

Inferno rocks so far by the way. Their units look badass and are a fun. Love the Gogs and Magogs!Inferno was always one of my favourites in HoMM along with the Castle.

EDIT 1: The text for when a spell is intercepted needs changing. Says "We were shot down by an enemy interceptor" or something like that.

EDIT 2: The larger cities look really good, Tom. The Dungeon cities look fantastic especially.