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| Thread: Alternative Stack Experience | |
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Totoro
Famous Hero
in User
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posted August 21, 2008 12:04 AM |
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Alternative Stack Experience
At first I want to say that you don't need to know a rat's ass about modding or scripting so don't get scared away if these are aliens to you.
Introduction:
WOG-team created a neat thing called stack experience. However, it wasn't so neat after all, I thought after several games I played with it.
I don't know what you think about it, do you like to use it?
Anyhow, I found it way too overpowered. Why?
Bad #1: You gain the experience way too easy. You need just couples of fights and your troops are ranked Ace.
Bad #2: Nothing else beats Ace ranks than Ace ranks. 10 Centaur Captain-Aces can defeat 100 Centaur Captain-fresh recruits. This is ridiculous. Let's imagine a situation: A hero is enclosing to your town. You immediately create the population inside but they're just sucky new recruits without any exp. How you're expected to get some ranks for these newbies in the 1-2 turns that you have time. Propably you can't, and the enemy hero comes with his one week pops with high ranks (they always have high ranks because they take few fights on the road to your town) and crushes your 2 week pops like a bug.
'Balanced' is not the word to describe this.
But fortunately WOG-team also explains how to edit Stack Experience, and there we go. I grabbed my pencil (figurative) and started editing and I spent several days in editing of these text files *opening his arms for acknowledgements.*
Very tiring work, I have to say...
That was about six months ago. I actually haven't played the game at all since then. We test-played this once with my buddy and that's all the use it has been into.
But enough of introduction. Get to the point.
Alright, this Stack Experience style I've created introduces a new aspect to the gameplay.
The drastic thing is that non-upgraded creatures are as good, or even little better than the upgraded versions until the experience of the stack reaches certain point.
At this certain point is the time to upgrade your stack and when you do, the experience of the stack grows by 20%.
The trick is that the longer you keep your stack of creatures non-upgraded, the more experience it gains when you upgrade it.
This incorporates more maneuvering into your gameplay.
This is just the major thing in it. I also changed many other things I didn't like about WOG-team Stack exp. For example, the experience won't grow so fast, high ranks not being so much overpowered.
I've touched every other creature except commanders, for when I got that far I had lost all my interest already. So they are left like WOG-team made them.
If you don't know how to put it in use, I'll tell ya how simple it is:
1. Download these two text files from here.
2. Place them in your Data -folder in your Heroes3 -folder. There are already the two original stack exp -files made by WOG-team and it asks you do you want to replace them. You may want to preserve these original files so I suggest placing them in some else folder (renaming won't do the trick)
3. Launch WoG and allow stack experience from Wogify-options.
Well, that's that. I just wanted to share it. Feel free to do anything with it.
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Salamandre
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Wog refugee
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posted August 21, 2008 01:03 AM |
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Quote:
Anyhow, I found it way too overpowered. Why?
Bad #1: You gain the experience way too easy. You need just couples of fights and your troops are ranked Ace.
Bad #2: Nothing else beats Ace ranks than Ace ranks. 10 Centaur Captain-Aces can defeat 100 Centaur Captain-fresh recruits. This is ridiculous. Let's imagine a situation: A hero is enclosing to your town. You immediately create the population inside but they're just sucky new recruits without any exp. How you're expected to get some ranks for these newbies in the 1-2 turns that you have time. Propably you can't, and the enemy hero comes with his one week pops with high ranks (they always have high ranks because they take few fights on the road to your town) and crushes your 2 week pops like a bug.
'Balanced' is not the word to describe this.
I think that what you describe here is more showing you as unexperienced player than an unbalanced script.
First, most thing you write are wrong and not tested. ACE is giving 50% more health, so 10 centaurs ACE will vanish as dust in front of 100 fresh recruits. Do the maths.
Second, it suits very well to reality. After doing "a couple of fights" (not true, for high level creatures you need 126000 exp to get ACE, and that means A LOT of fights) it is normal that a creature is better than one who didnt fight.
Returning to my first statement: when playing with experience enabled system, if you let troops not recruited in your town it is only your fault if you get attacked and has none experienced. AND if you let an ennemy hero to approach your town, you are nothing but amateur (general statement, not pointing at you) and deserve to be crushed.
I love the experience system because it creates a major challenge (AI gets 10 times faster ACE at 200% dificulty) and actually it BALANCES the game. Without experience enabled, AI doesnt stand a chance vs human.
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Paulemile
Known Hero
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posted August 21, 2008 09:30 AM |
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The only thing I dislike inside the stack experience feature is the speed bonus, sometimes huge, given to ace creatures.
We already are a lot of players finding the battlefield too short, this speed bonus screws this even more.
Anyway, the other stuff is nicely done.
If you think that your troops grow too fast in XP, turn the normal system off and choose the option that shares each experience point beteween all the creatures. This will slow your creatures improvement a lot.
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Salamandre
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Wog refugee
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posted August 21, 2008 11:53 AM |
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Quote:
If you think that your troops grow too fast in XP, turn the normal system off and choose the option that shares each experience point beteween all the creatures. This will slow your creatures improvement a lot.
What you talking about?! If you turn it off there is no experience gained in the game. Turn it on and the experience is shared between all creatures. What option?!
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Paulemile
Known Hero
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posted August 21, 2008 11:59 AM |
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Perhaps I explain it bad and I don't have WoG on this computer to find the right words.
I didn't say to disable the stack experience, but to change tha way the creatures gain XP.
I'll be able to post the right thing tonight (in about 7-8 hours for me).
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Totoro
Famous Hero
in User
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posted August 21, 2008 01:16 PM |
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Edited by Totoro at 13:19, 21 Aug 2008.
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Do not so fiercely attack me. I'm merely offering you a creation of my personal likes. If you don't like it, no one is making you to use it. If you don't feel any bit adventurous, don't try it.
And yes, my WOG-experience is limited to just around 15-20 games so I can be considered as inexperienced Wogger.
However, what I want to point out, is that I dislike the style that makes everything centered at stack experience, when it is allowed.
It is a game-enhancing feature but, in my opinion, should not be the factor that controls the tides of battle.
I didn't like the just two choices you had: Either allow it or don't allow it. I wanted something from between so I created this.
The statement that Rank Ace gives nothing but +50% health is incorrect. Let us take Centaur Captain as an example again. I'll be describing the difference between rank 0 and rank 10 Centaur Captain:
Rank 0 Rank 10
10 Health 15 Health
6 Attack Skill 11 Attack Skill
3 Defense Skill 10 Defense Skill
2-3 Damage 5-7 Damage
8 Speed 10 Speed
No Bonuses Champion Charge Bonus
20% more damage to gnolls
This is just level 1 creature. The rank differences between higher level creatures are larger.
And you don't seem to believe that it is just 4-5 fights from rank 0 to 10 when we're fighting with and against legions of units in the late game. Also a small amount of freshly recruited creatures added into a much greater stack kind of automatically upgrades these new
creatures to rank 10 so it not hard at all to get stack experience fast and easily.
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Paulemile
Known Hero
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posted August 21, 2008 08:46 PM |
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My bad, I made a mistake.
The option I was talking about is not a WoG option in the menu, but an ERM command : !!UN: P900/3;
check the ERM help file and you'll find it. It is a good way to slow the XP grow speed.
Anyway Totoro, your system seems not so bad at all. The current one is fine for me though, no need to change it, except those speed bonuses.
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ZombieBear
Hired Hero
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posted January 19, 2009 01:08 PM |
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You're right about Stack Experience being useless.
A) It offers no strategy to the game. The other HoMM games have no stack experience for a reason, especially H5. This isn't Disciples II.
B) Makes it very hard to level up another hero
C) Absolutely impossible to defend a castle with fresh recruits even when numbers are 9 : 1 in your favor. Might as well not leave creatures in your castle ever. Things just become a game of tag.
There are other reasons I can put here but I really don't care much about this cause I'm just trying to get some posts under my belt. But I played with Stack Experience for a long time because I liked the moves the creatures gained, but games were often frustrating and it felt nothing like Heroes anymore. I found when I turned it back off and played that my enjoyment of the game came back. They just need to make it so creatures have those moves without Stack Experience.
Creature spellcasting (like in H5) would also be nice.
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