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Storm-Giant
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
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posted October 17, 2013 02:28 PM |
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JollyJoker said:
All nice and well, but I believe there are a couple snags.
The first one is, that I'm pretty certain that alternatives make sense only when they are bought with at least a reduction of upgrades.
You mean like H2, where some units had upgrades and others didn't? I'm not against that, seems a good idea.
JollyJoker said:
The second one is, that alternative Champions sound nice and all, but in practice, for Champions they wouldn't HAVE to be alternatives, because they already are even when they are not: by the time you build the first Champion dwelling you have a lot of options how to burn your limited money: upgrades, creature buying, maybe building up another town, buying more heroes, building special dwellings the last mage guild levels, you name it.
Mmmm...maybe I focused my mind too much on duels (where creature choices can have a big impact, as we could see in TotE Eliv Duel Maps) and you're more about normal maps, where you start builiding a town with limited resources?
Still, I don't see the problem. If we had alternative Champions:
"by the time you build the first Champion dwelling you have a lot of options how to burn your limited money: upgrades, creature buying, maybe building up another town, buying more heroes, building special dwellings the last mage guild levels, or building the Champion building of your choice."
The "do something else instead of building champion building" is still there, just you have another choice when building the champ building. Or I'm missing something?
JollyJoker said:
Generally it's a lot more interesting when you can build MORE units than you have army slots, because the planning is more diffuclt (look to HoMM 2).
That's a different approach, isn't it? Instead of shaping your army by choices at Elite/Champs, you have to decide if you keep adding the low tier units or leave one stack in one town/hero and start building numbers for other creature.
JollyJoker said:
So what is ACTUALLY needed is the HoMM 2 building model, expanded to 7 army slots with individual building plans for each faction.
I think I didn't fully understand this. You mean, sth like 8 creatures to recruit in each town?
Could you elaborate a bit more the last part, please? 
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted October 17, 2013 04:16 PM |
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Storm-Giant said:
Still, I don't see the problem. If we had alternative Champions:
"by the time you build the first Champion dwelling you have a lot of options how to burn your limited money: upgrades, creature buying, maybe building up another town, buying more heroes, building special dwellings the last mage guild levels, or building the Champion building of your choice."
The "do something else instead of building champion building" is still there, just you have another choice when building the champ building. Or I'm missing something?
Sorry, my fault. What I should have written is:
"by the time you have built the first Champion dwelling you have a lot of options how to burn your limited money: upgrades, creature buying, maybe building up another town, buying more heroes, building special dwellings the last mage guild levels OR THE SECOND CHAMPION DWELLING." - And most of the time the second Champion dwelling won't suggest itself anyway, because you'll need the money for something else.
That should make it clear. I don't see any reason to make it a STRICT alternative - most of the time you will built one only anyway, and when you play a really big map, building two might be fun and a challenge.
Quote:
JollyJoker said:
Generally it's a lot more interesting when you can build MORE units than you have army slots, because the planning is more diffuclt (look to HoMM 2).
That's a different approach, isn't it? Instead of shaping your army by choices at Elite/Champs, you have to decide if you keep adding the low tier units or leave one stack in one town/hero and start building numbers for other creature.
JollyJoker said:
So what is ACTUALLY needed is the HoMM 2 building model, expanded to 7 army slots with individual building plans for each faction.
I think I didn't fully understand this. You mean, sth like 8 creatures to recruit in each town?
Could you elaborate a bit more the last part, please?
Okay. First of all, if there IS to be an alternative build, all in all allowing to build as many different creatures than there are army slots - 7 army slots, 8 different creatures, but 2 as an alternative, so that you could build 7 in all -, then I think that while the Champion choice may look "epic", in practice it will be a question of necessity (what you have got and can afford) more often than a question of real choice PLUS see above. That's why I think that the better GAMEPLAY option is an alternative ELITE, because that may be actually REALLY relevant AND would need more planning because of the unclear resource situation at a time where you start building Elites.
Secondly, if there are LESS builds than army slots - no problem, you have always room for splits or joins or a stack from a different town - WHATEVER: everything is of use.
However, if you have LESS slots than regular units you can produce, your task is to field the best possible army in the available amount of time: if you know HoMM 2, it was clear that you would have to leave out Peasants because they sucked, but the rest wasn't all that clear and would depend on money, time, resources and opponent; once you had all slots filled, there was still a way to "upgrade" your army, with the 6th troop giving a secondary something to do with.
So all in all I think we need individual city plans like they were in HoMM 2, every faction having their own number of possible upgrades and prerequisites, one or two units more to build in town than slots are there, plus one or two alternative builds to keep an opponent guessing and to allow lots of different army setups for one and the same town.
I think that the upgrade card has been played too often: In Homm 3 and 5 you will upgrade only the units that you absolutely need to upgrade for creeping, say, Marksmen in HoMM 3, in order to get the NUMBERS first, while in HoMM 6, it doesn't matter what you do, because everything you do gains in numbers.
I would wish a mix of "Horde buildings" (gaining numbers), upgrades (where they really COUNT as in Giant -> Titan), and alternatives where they really ARE one (like in HoMM 4, for example the Unicorn/Griffin one, where the Griffin is better but also a lot more difficult to put on the map or the Mage/Golem one, both having advantages, but needing different play, or even the Priest/Crusader one, in short where you may have to look on your skills and spells to decide what to go for. Plus less slots than buildable creatures, and individual town plans.
I mean, sure, people would argue to death, whether this was OP in combi with that - but they do that with DoC as well, the main thing being, that most of the time it's actually a stone/SCissor/paper situation and not a real domination.
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DoubleDeck
Promising
Legendary Hero
Look into my eyes...
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posted October 17, 2013 05:04 PM |
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Nice post Warlord 
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War-overlord
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
Presidente of Isla del Tropico
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posted October 17, 2013 05:10 PM |
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DoubleDeck said:
Nice post Warlord
Thank you. Another one will follow tonight, I think.
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Vote El Presidente! Or Else!
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SepSpring
Known Hero
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posted October 17, 2013 05:39 PM |
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Line-ups in the next instalment should also be wide enough in order to represent all the creatures of a certain faction, I guess. For example, the world's lore expanded by the "Duel of Champions" provided Academy with several new creature types, so I hope to see all of them present in "Heroes VII". Not sure about Taweret Warriors, but Dervishes and Dragon Golems (possibly the alternative champion creatures) must appear there.
By the way, are Gremlins still a part of Academy? Labour? Or just removed (remember Erwan talking about moving away some irrelevant Academy elements)?
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War-overlord
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
Presidente of Isla del Tropico
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posted October 17, 2013 09:21 PM |
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So, what are we gonna cover today? Hmmm lets do Elves. Both kinds even. And what the hey. Let's chuck in Naga as well.
Dungeon
Dark, dingy, self-interested and backstabbing. Yep, we're talking Dark Elves and with that we're talking Dungeon.
Today I'm not gonna talk about why I think Dark Elves need to be replaced by Minotaurs as the main race of Dungeon. I've done that several times before in several new-Dungeon proposals and I just may save that for a "what I thinks should happen if Ubisoft pulls a Heroes4" post in this thread. (Which I'm thinking I'm gonna do once I've covered all factions)
So, what's wrong with Dark Elves that can be fixed without throwing them overboard? That is a rather difficult question to answer, actually. And it's Ubisoft's fault for writing them badly. Because what stands out from Dark Elves, for me? Not that much. Especially in Heroes6, the Dark Elves were the blandest of all. All that realy springs to mind, for me, is that they fought themselves a lot. Realy a lot.
Fine let's continue on that. Dark Elves being divided, untrustworthy and in a constant rat race, that's a nice place to start. But in that aspect, Ubi falls short, because it never takes off from there. If we take the Compendium as a guide, we see that Dark Elves suffer from an interesting affliction. Namely, because they worship the Goddess of Darkness, their minds are constantly beset by the Whispers of Darkness. And this divides the Dark Elves into 3 kinds, the weak ones who are driven insane, the "medium" ones who take drugs to suppress the whispers, and the strong ones who can bare the whispers and use it to their advantage. This is something with potential, but so far all that's ever been done with this is afflict an Angel with it to drive it insane. But this can make for conflicted characters, character development and all in all better story. But in the end the Dark Elves so far have been nothing but bland, so any fleshing out is an improvement at this point.
As far as line-up goes, Dungeon has always been a little bit out there. There has never been much consistency throughout the instalments, With 2 noticable exceptions, who have been in Dungeon always. Namely Minotaurs and (black) Dragons. Without a doubt that needs to continue. No Minotaurs; No Dragons; No Dungeon.
Sylvan
And then there were the treehuggers, we talking Sylvan now.
With these Elves, we've somewhat less to go on. Obviously because Sylvan was not included in Heroes6.
But is there nothing to comment on them? Of course there is. One of those things is that Ubisoft is trying to encompass both Wood and High Elves into one kind of Elf. Is that a bad thing? No, not necessarily. And we have not seen the chance to see them pull it off badly twice in a row, by favor of them only being in one. Heroes 5 was bad all around, though TotE made some steps in the right direction.
Is there something else to say of the Elves? Well, they behave like typical Elves so far. And I'm not sure wether to call that classic or or lazy. But like more factions to follow, we've somewhat less to go on.
When it comes to the line-up, there is precedent. That being Elven Bowmen, which are classical, and Unicorns. Not much to go on, but it's a start. But then there was the Compendium. And there I noticed a serious threat. The 3 Iconic Sylvan units listed were Pixies, which are flower/leaf fairies; Dryads, which are dying Elves sealed into trees which return as forrest-spirits taking the form of trees and bushes; And Treants, which are basically trees. Notice a pattern there? It's plants. They are all living plants. If we get 3 plant units or more in the next instalment, Ubisoft is stretching the same idea very thin and is being repetative. Assuming we only get 7 units. Take warning, those who read this!(I doubt it, but Elvin and other insiders might relay some things we say here) Keep it down on the plants!
Sanctuary
Samurai Snakes, it sounds like a bad 80's/90's cartoon show designed to sell you toys. But no. We're talking the Naga now.
Again, we face a little difficulty here since we've only seen the naga in one instalment. And unfortunately for me, since I'm in complaining mode now, it was the better of the two when we look at lore.
The Naga are more or less the result of the thought-experiment: "What would be if Japanese people were half-snake?" And, damn, they didn't do a half bad job of it. A bit stereotype, perhaps, but I did not consider it all too offensive. And there lies, perhaps, the crux of this. When we talk of Elves or Knight or Orcs, we have an idealtype in the back of our mind to which we measure the incarnation we get shown. Who here had an ideal-type of Asian Snake-people, I ask? Most of you didn't and therefore in that aspect the Naga were unable to dissappoint.
Unless you were one of those who refuse to accept Naga outside the Wizard/Academy faction. Tough luck there, kid. But when do we accept things as a precedent? Because this only carried over from 3 to 4. Can we realy make a precendent of this then? I say: Nay.
What about the rest of Sanctuary? Well, two water spirits in one tier was too much.(Remember this? How people disliked it? Don't repeat that mistake when you try to cram 3 plants into Sylvan) And only two Naga was not enough for a Racial Basis, says I. Three is the minimum, as far as I am concerned. I liked the Kirins a lot, they're keepers. And I thought the Shark Guards were awesome. (I realy should've played might to get more use out of them)
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Vote El Presidente! Or Else!
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DoubleDeck
Promising
Legendary Hero
Look into my eyes...
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posted October 18, 2013 10:19 AM |
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SepSpring said:
By the way, are Gremlins still a part of Academy? Labour? Or just removed (remember Erwan talking about moving away some irrelevant Academy elements)?
Well they kicked out Halflings, so Gremlins are probably following too!
Nice post again War-overlord! Yeah let's not make Sylvan faction all plants! Need those Elf archers/hunters!
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted October 18, 2013 10:22 PM |
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Edited by Elvin at 22:22, 18 Oct 2013.
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NECROPOLIS
Necro's core themes are attrition warfare, army revival, numerical advantage on the field, limited mobility, damage and support.
One of the most prominent necro trademarks is the ability to curse and gradually weaken its enemies until they can no longer keep up. This theme was mostly promoted through magic during H5(zombie special saw too little action and ghost dragons saw even less play) but by the next installment and DoC it was also carried out by units. It is only fair, fighting the undead is not meant to be an exercise in hygiene and some might even wield magical curses. Their high numbers, undead immunities and revival powers further support this strategy, allowing them to withstand a lot of damage as the opponent gets weaker and weaker, until he drowns in a sea of undead.
For that to work the undead must have some physical disadvantages, such as lower mobility, damage and support. Did H6 succeed in this formula? Not quite. Their necro was incredibly resilient, had incredible revival and on top of that, ridiculous amounts of damage too. What I think necro needs instead, is the ability to harvest ridiculous amounts of skeletons once again! Being mere skeletons, they should not be hard to kill nor should they do high damage but they would have strength in numbers. The H5 concept of dark energy was also enjoyable but also a little unnecessarily complex and harder to balance. I would not mind if the other cores were also possible to raise, as long as the ghosts were not overkill in the hands of a magic user.
The crazy amounts of revival should be toned down as well. H6 necromancy was atrocious(free, instant, potent raise dead!!) and mass life drain was also pretty cheesy. I'd rather we stick to a high level vampirism that only affects one unit at a time. And instead of raising your own units, why not bring back the H4 raise dead spells(raise ghost/skeleton/vampire etc) to raise undead out of fallen enemy stacks? Or maybe even unearth skeletons from the very ground, Ashan should be littered with bones after so many wars.
From a lineup perspective, I don't think I'd like necro to have more than 2 shooters. I prefer the idea of an undead horde shambling toward the enemy with some ranged support, instead of a turtling necro. Even if you chose to play defensively, you have weakening abilities and spells - you don't need ranged overkill on top of that.
On to the possible new themes. Unfortunately there is not much in the way of unified themes so I'll have to mix and match a bit.
For one, we have the haunted forest theme. Not much I would consider lineup material though the mood is nice.
 
 
Then there is the moonsilk and webbing subtheme. Possible spider infestation? I am not a fan either way, they are just spiders..
 
Then there are some spirit alternatives like a fate sealer possession and non-humanoid wraiths. That might be interesting as long as they do not take the ghostly form of other faction units.
 
And a special mention, say hello to the mummy!
I'd really like to see those guys as elites. Vampires and liches are kind of a must but lamasu? Boring diseased meatshields, they cannot compare to the fun of a unit that actively tries to curse as many units as possible. Case in point the H5 earth daughter. Or even better, bring back the death knights! I miss those guys terribly, who would think that such an awesome unit would stay out of the loop since H3? Namtaru were fun but.. screw that. I'd much rather see a scythed reaper as champion. With that we could reintroduce the minor theme of instant death(H5 wraith, doc banshee) and even better, make it scale with enemy stacks. Like an activated version of death stare ability that the mighty gorgons once had. How awesome would that be?
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H5 is still alive and kicking, join us in the Duel Map discord server!
Map also hosted on Moddb
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MattII
Legendary Hero
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posted October 19, 2013 11:26 AM |
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Why are vampires a must in Necropolis? Sure they're undead, but they're thinking undead, and often independent, which makes them seem out of place IMO in the standard Necro lineup. Of course, if you were to make vampiric creatures a separate sub-faction (akin to how you differentiated the Blackskull and Sahaar orcs), that might work. I'm imagining at least 5 creatures, an archer (living, but unaffected by morale), a ground-beast of some sort (wolf maybe? or a ghoul?), a flying beast (big eagle, or would a bat be more appropriate?), a 'lesser' vampire (the unit traditionally called a vampire) and a 'greater' vampire (think Stoker's Count Dracula, with just a few less abilities).
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted October 19, 2013 11:34 AM |
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Liches have independent thinking too and same goes for death knights, I do not see the issue. And as to why vampires are a must.. cause they're awesome  Possible exception being the H6 vampire, what's up with retaliation-triggering, 4 speed, tanky vampires with crappy life drain?
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H5 is still alive and kicking, join us in the Duel Map discord server!
Map also hosted on Moddb
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MattII
Legendary Hero
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posted October 19, 2013 12:20 PM |
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Edited by MattII at 12:28, 19 Oct 2013.
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Fair enough, but could you really see Count Dracula or the likes taking orders from some two-bit wandering hero? BTW, Vampires are rather older than the other two (pre-dating lichs by at least a century, and death knights by at least a century and a half), so there's you're working against the grain a bit more. Of course, taking all of that in mind, the major objection I have is to those over-the-top suits, if they did wear rags (as in the H3 base creature) I'd have less disdain towards them, but those suits are just too out-of-place to fit in IMO
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Storm-Giant
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
On the Other Side!
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posted October 19, 2013 12:41 PM |
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MattII said:
Why are vampires a must in Necropolis?
Because they're cool
And agree with Elvin, Death Knights are a must for next Heroes. They could be a great Elite/tier 6 unit
(will answer JJ & look at Ovelord posts later)
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xerox
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
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posted October 19, 2013 12:46 PM |
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I think the Lich / Vampire hegemony is an obstacle for Necropolis. It forces those units to take up two important, relatively high-up creature slots every game (except H4, which had the boring Venomspawn instead). Maybe a solution could be to merge the Vampire and Death Knight (as is already the case in Ashan lore) and have a Vampire Knight instead? I think the only thing I would miss are the awesome teleportation animations. But you could give those to Wraiths instead!
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Over himself, over his own
body and
mind, the individual is
sovereign.
- John Stuart Mill
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War-overlord
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
Presidente of Isla del Tropico
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posted October 19, 2013 12:49 PM |
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xerox said:
I think the Lich / Vampire hegemony is an obstacle for Necropolis. It forces those units to take up two important, relatively high-up creature slots every game (except H4, which had the boring Venomspawn instead). Maybe a solution could be to merge the Vampire and Death Knight (as is already the case in Ashan lore) and have a Vampire Knight instead? I think the only thing I would miss are the awesome teleportation animations. But you could give those to Wraiths instead!
Which is exactly why we've been arguing that the 7 creatures limit is incredibly and unnecessarily restricting. Which is why we've been arguing that Towns should be able to build more than 7 dwellings.
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Vote El Presidente! Or Else!
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted October 19, 2013 12:54 PM |
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From the perspective of lore this makes sense as black knights are vampires. But thematically one is supposed to be a mobile life drainer while the other a crazy damage-dealing rider. I honestly would not want to see the black knights get life drain and on the other hand I would miss the 'proper' vampires I have grown to love.
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H5 is still alive and kicking, join us in the Duel Map discord server!
Map also hosted on Moddb
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SepSpring
Known Hero
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posted October 19, 2013 12:57 PM |
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Well, the fifth and sixth "Heroes" and the "Duel of Champions" are the main projects that reveal the most important attributes, characteristics and features of Ashan's factions. So, we have the following.
Academy: 2/3
Dungeon: 2/3 (it's actually 3/3 as I'm sure Dungeon will appear in "Duel of Champions")
Fortress: 1/3
Haven: 3/3
Inferno: 3/3
Necropolis: 3/3
Sanctuary: 2/3
Stronghold: 3/3
Sylvan: 1/3
Fortress and Sylvan must be introduced in "Heroes VII", Sanctuary and Academy - desirable. Others - doesn't matter. But, to be honest, I'm really bored with some factions, especially Haven, Inferno and Necropolis.
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Storm-Giant
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
On the Other Side!
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posted October 19, 2013 01:01 PM |
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xerox said:
I think the Lich / Vampire hegemony is an obstacle for Necropolis. It forces those units to take up two important, relatively high-up creature slots every game (except H4, which had the boring Venomspawn instead). Maybe a solution could be to merge the Vampire and Death Knight (as is already the case in Ashan lore) and have a Vampire Knight instead? I think the only thing I would miss are the awesome teleportation animations. But you could give those to Wraiths instead!
No, that's sound stupid, imo
War-overlord said:
xerox said:
I think the Lich / Vampire hegemony is an obstacle for Necropolis. It forces those units to take up two important, relatively high-up creature slots every game (except H4, which had the boring Venomspawn instead). Maybe a solution could be to merge the Vampire and Death Knight (as is already the case in Ashan lore) and have a Vampire Knight instead? I think the only thing I would miss are the awesome teleportation animations. But you could give those to Wraiths instead!
Which is exactly why we've been arguing that the 7 creatures limit is incredibly and unnecessarily restricting. Which is why we've been arguing that Towns should be able to build more than 7 dwellings.
Hear hear!
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xerox
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
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posted October 19, 2013 01:02 PM |
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Edited by xerox at 13:03, 19 Oct 2013.
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You're all so conservative!=P
Elvin said:
From the perspective of lore this makes sense as black knights are vampires. But thematically one is supposed to be a mobile life drainer while the other a crazy damage-dealing rider. I honestly would not want to see the black knights get life drain and on the other hand I would miss the 'proper' vampires I have grown to love.
This could be solved with the system proposed by War-overlord and other people (which I agree with as it gives us more choice) but point is, it gets restrictive to always reserve two creature slots for the Lich and Vampire. It makes it hard for the faction to reinvent itself, which I think is important as I don't see the point in playing what's essentially the same faction with better graphics, though H6 kinda tried that by giving the Vampire a new role (tank).
____________
Over himself, over his own
body and
mind, the individual is
sovereign.
- John Stuart Mill
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Storm-Giant
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
On the Other Side!
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posted October 19, 2013 01:10 PM |
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xerox said:
but point is, it gets restrictive to always reserve two creature slots for the Lich and Vampire. It makes it hard for the faction to reinvent itself, which I think is important as I don't see the point in playing what's essentially the same faction with better graphics, though H6 kinda tried that by giving the Vampire a new role (tank).
But it isn't neccesary to reinvent each faction each game. And it's logical that factions have some iconic creatures that appear in most of the games. Name Skeletons/Vampires/Liches for Necropolis, Black Dragons/Minotaurs for Dungeon, ranged elves/pixies for Sylvan and so on
And it's make sense, that also helps to follow factions through different games (you recognize the creatures).
I can understand that you may see them very restrictive for Necropolis since they are 2 of the 3 Elite/High tier units, but with extra creatures in each faction that would be solved, at least in some way.
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xerox
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
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posted October 19, 2013 01:24 PM |
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Edited by xerox at 13:25, 19 Oct 2013.
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Quote:
I can understand that you may see them very restrictive for Necropolis since they are 2 of the 3 Elite/High tier units,
Yes, that is my primary problem. That you always have two guaranteed high tier Necro creatures and then a third wild card. There are iconic creatures that should stay to create a consistent line between the games but these could be given somewhat different roles, i.e. the H3 Skeleton didn't do the same things as the H6 Skeleton.
____________
Over himself, over his own
body and
mind, the individual is
sovereign.
- John Stuart Mill
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