Work in Progress - Conquests of Might and Magic III

[tom2050]

I had a thought... I may end up doing this for Heroes in the game. In order to build the Tavern, you must first successfully have a victorious unit in battle, and have a successful Army. This provides the Tavern to be able to be built (so sitting back and not fighting will only put you back in strength).

The Tavern can then be built, and then that will unlock several very important upgrades. The 2 Hero upgrade buildings (although not actually in HoMM3 game) will be the Tavern of Might and Tavern of Magic. You will only be able to build one of them (since they replace the other). I'll have to check out what different abilities to give the Magic Heroes and Might Heroes, but the Tavern's will spit out an upgradable nothing unit, then once upgraded, the upgrade line will upgrade it to that Civ's appropriate Hero.

It should work great, I hope there are no major holes in this... I'll have to test it out to make sure. This is the best way I have come up with so far to do this.

Some of it depends on the limitations of an actual army. We know that extra hitpoints apply to Armies (I think). But do other things work such as Enslavement (on the Army unit itself)?

Tom

 

[Wolfhart]

Some of it depends on the limitations of an actual army. We know that extra hitpoints apply to Armies (I think). But do other things work such as Enslavement (on the Army unit itself)?

Yep, armies with extra hitpoints get those added to the units loaded in the army.

Any Enslaving unit you've loaded into the army will still Enslave, and that also means that an army loaded with different kinds of units with the ability to Enslave may create different kinds of units depending on which unit in the army is doing the battle at the moment. The Army itself may also Enslave through Lethal Bombardment.

You'll find more info about armies here.

 

[tom2050]

Awesome unit Tom. The animations are really nice. A civ coloured version would be very cool. It looks quite mechanical actually. It could pass for a robotic bull or something too if anyone ever had a need for such a unit.

Even though it doesn't look like it, a civ coloured version should be very easy to do; I may try to do it in my spare time in the coming week or so.

Yep, armies with extra hitpoints get those added to the units loaded in the army.

Any Enslaving unit you've loaded into the army will still Enslave, and that also means that an army loaded with different kinds of units with the ability to Enslave may create different kinds of units depending on which unit in the army is doing the battle at the moment. The Army itself may also Enslave through Lethal Bombardment.

You'll find more info about armies here.

Thank you for the link... extremely informative and I think that answered all my questions. Now I have a better understanding of what I can implement into the Armies.


Once I test it all out, I'm going to start working on all the Hero graphics, I believe I have enough of them for all 9 HoMM3 Civilizations.

Tom

 

[tom2050]

A couple screenshots of the latest.

A common occurance of large battles taking place between 2 nations (Castle against Tower). I (Tower) have primarily Gremlins, Gargoyles, and Golems at this point... Against the Castles Pikeman, Archers, Griffins, Swordsman, and Monks. I surprise attacked the Castle (since they were getting too powerful as they doubled in size) but I was only able to take 2 cities and now have been forced into more of a defensive position.

The Behemoth and Ancient Behemoth keeping guard near the sands of the Stronghold. Also, a Dungeon Hero in the upper part of the screen.

Tom

 

[bigdog5994]

looks like its gonna be an awesome mod Tom

 

[tom2050]

Question: Heroes of Might Magic III had 7 levels of units... Level 1 being the weakest and 7 being the strongest.

Their was a fan made expansion that provided Level 8 units for each Civ (which are quite powerful).

To keep them from being overpowered, they would rarely be produced. Initially I wasn't sure what to do with them, and was going to omit them, but I see no reason to do that, they would be an interesting feature. Here's an example from HoMM3, which on my part would just require some recolouring work.

Level 7 Stronghold Units
Behemoth -------------------> Ancient Behemoth
-Upgrades to->

Level 8 Stronghold Unit
Ghost Behemoth


I can incorporate these into the mod... but do you think it would be best to make a seperate BIQ scenario for these, or should I just stick it in the main scenario?

I see no reason why not too, unless anyone minds me adding in some of the fan made HoMM3 expansion ideas in here; in that case I can make seperate ones. These would also give some additional meaning to the Grail structure for Civ3 .

Tom

 

[nick0515]

Well I have no problem what-so-ever with you adding stuff from fan made expansions Tom. The more units (and any other content) the better!

 

[DFBATTLER]

Wow. This looks... FANTASTIC! I cannot wait :superangst:

A question: What's gonna happen with the level 8-10 monsters that are featured in SoD and AB? Like the Azure Dragon, Crystal Dragon, Fairy Dragon and so on? Also, other units like Sharpshooters and Enchanters?

 

[tom2050]

Well I have no problem what-so-ever with you added stuff from fan made expansions Tom. The more units (and any other content) the better!

I suppose that only makes sense.

Wow. This looks... FANTASTIC! I cannot wait :superangst:

A question: What's gonna happen with the level 8-10 monsters that are featured in SoD and AB? Like the Azure Dragon, Crystal Dragon, Fairy Dragon and so on? Also, other units like Sharpshooters and Enchanters?

Good Question, many of them are already entered into the mod... but currently are just set to a Neutral Civ. For an Epic game, there are enough of these units to be used for a Neutral Civ, so I suppose this is the only way to use them. I'd have to come up with a Neutral City graphic. A Neutral Civ with Level 10 units could be overly powerful

For scenarios, they could be preplaced, or perhaps require a special resource to build them. For sharpshooters, I was going to allow Archers, Marksmen, Elves and Grand Elves to upgrade to the Sharpshooter (as was in HoMM3), although this would be very expensive. For epic games, I suppose I could add a very rare resource to allow this.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

EDIT: For neutrals, I will go ahead and create a city graphic that best represents them. The neutral creatures of the game number about 15 or so. This number matches closely to other towns, so it should work well. Some of the top level neutral creatures are very powerful, and are Level 10 (compared to other towns top of Level 8 from HoMM3 fan-made expansion). To counter this power, Neutral civ's will not have the ability to have Heroes... When I come up with a few city graphics, I'll post them to get input on if they fit or not.

------------------------------------

On another note; since the AI does not use Land Artillery units (very rarely), I will keep the units that have bombard in, but will make their Rate of Fire's very low so they cannot be overly powerful to human player. This can be justified (somewhat) according to HoMM3 as being a Range Penalty. Weak Ranged units will have RoF 1, Mid units 2, and units like the Titan 3.

Regarding the Castle Defenses (Archer Towers, etc), only Catapults, Cyclops, and Cyclops Kings (and perhaps Ballistas) will have the ability to destroy these. The Tower Civ, which is Magic based, may not have the ability to get Catapults and Ballistas (although not decided yet) because they are quite powerful as is.

Tom

 

[DFBATTLER]

Maybe that Neutral civ is just barbs?

 

[tom2050]

Maybe that Neutral civ is just barbs?

Well, I am using a couple neutral creatures as Barbs, but barbs are limited to only 2 units, which would leave the other 13 or so out of the game. Many of the neutral creatures are quite unique in their own way, and although they will be included regardless for scenarios; it would be nice to have them playable in an Epic normal game as well (to fill the void also since their are some open civilization spots).

It shouldn't be too much work to put something together, so I'll see how it goes.

Tom

 

[vmxa]

iirc only Grand Elves could upgrade and you had to either have a special hero or a special artifact. In some maps you could go to site and upgrade them. That may have only been in Chronicles.

 

[Roland Ironfist]

Personally not so sure about adding the WoG creatures since they're not part of the Antagarich lore itself, but there are several official, more interesting ones you could use for level-8s

 

[Virote_Considon]

Responding to a post on the previous page, don't make the battle created unit an army instead of a leader. This would mean that each civ would only be allowed one army at a time!

 

[tom2050]

iirc only Grand Elves could upgrade and you had to either have a special hero or a special artifact. In some maps you could go to site and upgrade them. That may have only been in Chronicles.

You may be right, I will have to check to make sure. For epic games, I could make the resource extremely rare that allows this, but due to how expensive the Sharpshooters were in HoMM3, it's unlikely that the AI will upgrade all of them.

Personally not so sure about adding the WoG creatures since they're not part of the Antagarich lore itself, but there are several official, more interesting ones you could use for level-8s

I will just make a Wake of Gods BIQ later as an add on, otherwise we will all be stuck with crazy little Santa Gremlins running around.


If I add WoG creatures, then I will end up adding them all, and that would take too much time right now since I would like to have the inital mod done before the start of the next decade, and once released I will always have time later to continue making new BIQ scenarios, etc. So I think you are right; I will save them until I can do all WoG creatures, and release a "Civilization III Heros of Might and Magic III Official Wake Of Gods fan-made expansion Civ modification" .

Speaking of official level-8's, the Fairie Dragon should be done soon as well... it will be interesting using the Fairie Dragon in combo with Pandora's Box

Responding to a post on the previous page, don't make the battle created unit an army instead of a leader. This would mean that each civ would only be allowed one army at a time!

I didn't know that, but it is very good to know.

The problem is a civ will very rarely make an army from a leader (or do they?). In the early game, I found that having Armies around was a bit too powerful, since they could easily overrun most towns that are still in early building stages. When you are a 1/4th or a 1/3rd through the game, it is quite a different story, that is when Armies are very useful for everyone (In fact, they are almost needed, I had close calls when my Army with 4 units almost got decimated several times easily by the AI).

So what I have right now, is that each civ has 2 Army types available to it (in HoMM3 language, a Might Hero and Magic Hero). Only 1 can be built at a given time (player must choose between Might and Magic, but they can change this at any time during the game). The Buildings that make the Armies can only be built after the player has had a successful Army. This is an incentive for the player to be at war, otherwise no Armies.

This was the best solution I could come up with... Otherwise, with leaders, the AI will never ever get many armies, because it usually cashes them in to hurry a building, and this would give too much human player power. Does this sound good? It seemed to work ok in the test game.

-----------------

In another test game (which was to view the graphics in game; to make tweaks and fix things), it took over 150 turns for me (Stronghold) to wipe out a weaker AI civ (Inferno). AI had 12 cities and I had 20 cities. When I attacked with about 75 units, I figured it would be a walk in the park. Not only did all those 75 units disappear off the face of the map that turn, but I lost a city to the AI. I went to pure defense (Stronghold is bad defensively, great on offense) which was bad for me. Only when I got an Army from Battle did it help me from losing more cities.

The AI also got a battle created Army, which it used, which allowed it to build the autoproduction army building (it went for Magic). So I think this should work out well, and will keep AI in the game against human players.

Tom

 

[tom2050]

I've been thinking of how to incorporate some of the HoMM3 artifacts into Civ... Here's the only way I could think of for some of them.

HoMM3 had several artifacts that increased creature production if you acquired the artifact.
Legs, Loins, Torso, Arms and Head of Legion all increased certain level unit production.

I will make these artifacts very rare on the map; and if this artifact is acquired then it will allow a special building to be built (1 building for each piece) that will autoproduce a generic unit. This unit will be upgradable to the appropriate unit of that civilization. I will make the generic unit cost more than the civ's units so that way no upgrade cost is incurred. The building must require the resource within it's borders because if the resource is lost, then the extra production must be made to stop.

And for resources, there are several artifacts that provide endless streams of resources. The Ring of Infinite Gems, Inexhaustible Cart of Ore, Everpouring Vial of Mercury, etc.
Only problem is that they would be seperate resources from the normal ones, so I don't think this would work as Strategic Resources, perhaps making them Luxuries?? Right now, only the normal Luxuries exist, and I do need some HoMM3 luxuries to replace those with.

For the 4 Magic Artifacts (Tomb of Earth, Water, Fire, and Air Magic), these would be extremely rare also, but if acquired could make all the appropriate spells be available from having this strategic resource. This would be workable in Civ3. To make sure it is not overpowered, it would have to be set to have the resource become available a bit later in the game.

Most other artifacts, I will make only availabe to certain civs in the epic game. So the Necromancers would have artifacts such as the Rib Cage, Dragonbone Greaves, Pendant of Death, etc... Whereas the Fortress will have Buckler of the Gnoll King, Greater Gnoll's Flail, Centaurs Axe, etc.

This way the screen won't be cluttered with artifacts everywhere, since there are so many of them (135+).

----------------

Also to avoid the 'Disband the auto-produced units in cities to quickly build structures' problem, most all units (except buildable ones) will be worth next to nothing in shields (1 shield); and upgraded units will be worth the amount of what is determined should be their cost to upgrade to.

Tom

 

[Eclipse4449]

What a great idea! before I am able to get down and read this thread in its entirity, i have one question, Will this be a pbem capatible game?

 

[tom2050]

What a great idea! before I am able to get down and read this thread in its entirity, i have one question, Will this be a pbem capatible game?

I've actually never played a multiplayer game, but I can make a multiplayer version as well. I'm not overly familiar with all the in's and out's that there are to make sure it's multiplayer balanced, but I can search for some info on that in the threads here (if there are any, I'm sure there's info somewhere ). It would need to be done once I get the base game complete and everything added in, but if anyone has any Multiplayer tips; or threads were it is discussed, it would be appreciated (so I can begin to plan for what may need to be adjusted or added).

Tom

 

[Eclipse4449]

I've actually never played a multiplayer game, but I can make a multiplayer version as well. I'm not overly familiar with all the in's and out's that there are to make sure it's multiplayer balanced, but I can search for some info on that in the threads here (if there are any, I'm sure there's info somewhere ). It would need to be done once I get the base game complete and everything added in, but if anyone has any Multiplayer tips; or threads were it is discussed, it would be appreciated (so I can begin to plan for what may need to be adjusted or added).

Tom

Consider the complexity this scenario entails add to that the diversity of the human mind and players will come for this droves(build it and they will come) Hehe

It is a great thing to be challenged by a game but almost every person enjoys competition.

 

[tom2050]

Any ideas on how I should implement naval ships into this mod?

In Heroes III, there was only 1 type of ship, and the ship simply carried your army. If 2 ships attacked each other, it was the units onboard that fougt, and not the naval vessels themselves.

Should I have only 1 type of ship that is used only to transport troops (no attack value)? Or should I give the ship combat capabilities? Should I expand the ship line to make naval more interesting?

The amount of units ships will carry is undecided at this time, I was thinking about 7 units.

Tom