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Maurice
Hero of Order
Part of the furniture
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posted February 03, 2014 03:58 PM |
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Edited by Maurice at 16:01, 03 Feb 2014.
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JollyJoker said:
Maurice, the unit turns ON the BF - it must turn on the spot it occupies, and at no moment of its turning any part of it may overlap with space not currently occupied. Which means in the case of 3 hexes, that the unit will turn around the axis that runs through the centre point of the Hex-triple. This turnig, then produces a circle that must lie completely within the hex-triple, so the model would have to be very small, considering it would use up triple the space (inner circle versus outer circle). So if you have hexes with side length a, you could use radius (sqrt3)/2 of the hex for a single-hex unit and radius a for a triple-hex unit.
With squares you can use a model with radius a/2 for 1x1 and a model with radius a for a model with 2x2.
I've already come to that conclusion  . That's exactly the reason why I brought up grid refinement to smaller hexes, with each unit occupying more hexes instead of just one. Truth be said, the hex clusters without central hex start off ugly (as you already noted with the 3-hex that leaves a lot of empty space with a circle fitting). The cause for this is that the sides are not equal, alternating between X and X+1, where X is the number of rings of the hexagon. But it gets better as they increase in size, since the relative difference in its sides falls off.
Clusters where a hex is central look better, overall, because all sides are equal to X there. The funny thing is that you can have circles go slightly out of the hexagon cluster boundary, because the only condition they have to comply to is that they don't overlap the other circles. Basically, what you start off with is the smallest circle in your design and lay them out in a regular hexagonal pattern to determine the maximum radius so that they don't overlap. Once you have that radius, you can start fitting the larger circles in there and determine their maximum radius. There's some room for adjustment there. If you would confine the circles to be strictly within the hexagon cluster boundary, you'd have empty space between the circles.
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted February 03, 2014 04:18 PM |
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Actually I suggested a solution that amounted to simply halving grid size and having creatures with 2x2 and 3x3 squares then, but that actually doesn't make things better, because maneuvering gets that much more awkward - squares must have a certain size otherwise things get too tiny to properly move the stacks.
Additionally the blocking problems and awkwardness isn't so much a consequence of the size as such, but of bulkiness which happens when a unit has all their dimensions bigger than 1.
It's extremely unsatisfactory - all the more so, since this aspect of the game is unrealistic anyway: 1 Cerberus takes up more space than a legion of Preatorians ...
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted February 03, 2014 08:59 PM |
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JollyJoker said:
Then we misunderstand us, because picking things from all games beforehand is definitely NOT my approach, because that works even less.
Your approach is the normal one, but the problem is, that the point isn't PERFECTING A CERTAIN CHOICE OF GAME MECHANISM. That is, it makes no sense to make HoMM 7 a better HoMM 5.
Instead, as a developer you will want to try something new, not because of doing so, but because you may haave a vision: Heroes on the battlefield, every hero class their own level-up tree, individual town-building trees, terraforming, a completely new magic system - WHATEVER.
Yes I understand what you are saying here. Essentially I think we are talking about two slightly different things, in the sense that you talk about "the developer" as the person (lead designer) whereas I talk about "the developer" more in the sense of the company who owns the game. In a sense, I guess you can say there is a conflict, or at least a potential conflict, between the lead designer and the fan base because the fan base usually is rather conservative, so a lead designer with too far-reaching ideas of changing the game can easily become unpopular. Obviously the company who owns the game has some influence here through their choice of developer and, I guess, the amount of liberty he is given, although if I'm not mistaken in case of H6 the lead designer was a fan of the series, and yet the result was, imo., not successful.
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DoubleDeck
Promising
Legendary Hero
Look into my eyes...
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posted February 04, 2014 07:09 AM |
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I would go with HOMM7 being a better HOMM5
At least bringing back the 7 resources for starters, then that wonderful random skill development...adjusting for whatever is thrown at you!
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted February 04, 2014 09:32 AM |
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alcibiades said:
Yes I understand what you are saying here. Essentially I think we are talking about two slightly different things, in the sense that you talk about "the developer" as the person (lead designer) whereas I talk about "the developer" more in the sense of the company who owns the game. In a sense, I guess you can say there is a conflict, or at least a potential conflict, between the lead designer and the fan base because the fan base usually is rather conservative, so a lead designer with too far-reaching ideas of changing the game can easily become unpopular. Obviously the company who owns the game has some influence here through their choice of developer and, I guess, the amount of liberty he is given, although if I'm not mistaken in case of H6 the lead designer was a fan of the series, and yet the result was, imo., not successful.
Well, yes.
My review of past HoMM games would look this way:
HoMM 1: simple and addictive game play
HoMM 2: simple increase, most important change in Mechanics: Mana introduction and Secondary skills, most notably Wisdom as prerequisite to learn higher level spells (Note: I'm not sure whether the change with a view on MAGIC, that is, the mana system in combination with the Wisdom skill is really a BETTER mechanic; however, it's DIFFERENT.)
HoMM 3: another fat increase; Secondary skill system further developed; Wait command on the BF; Massive change of "general environment" (Note: I don't think that HoMM 3 has generally better Mechanics at work, in fact economy is worse, however, Secondary skills, albeit not great, proved to be an important addition, while the changes in Magic showed that some skill-spell interaction would be a winner as well).
HoMM 4: different game; overall the most consistent game up to that point - BUT, as general consent says, to massive a shift away from creatures to Heroes. (personally I don't like the graphics). (Note: the game introduces a ton of alternative mechanics, for example: simultaneous retaliation, daily creature growth, unit adventure movement points, alternative creature dwellings, and ... and ... and; problem is, the overall "alienness" of the game has been devaluating a lot of the concepts there.)
HoMM 5: a stuttering, but largely successful effort; adds a superior Secondary skill system, duels, racials for all and alternative upgrades, but becomes a victim of 3D, which has a couple of downsides;
HoMM 6: a critical effort; not really comparable with HoMM 4 in terms of revolutionary design, but compared to HoMM 4 an effort gone wrong, because changes were badly implemented. Design proves some mechanics wrong: reducing everything to "abilities"; reducing what have been secondary skills to unimportant number crunching (instead of giving simple advantages); massive resource reduction and a couple more).
HoMM 6 has been a waste of time, largely, because it tried to "repair" what wasn't broken. This is somewhat different than the HoMM 4 effort, which, from a design point of view, in my opinion, is superior and as an achievement the best that has been done (which doesn't mean, it's the best game in the series; it does only mean, that considering the development priorities the NWC team succeeded spectacularly in designing completely new basics.
What makes this really difficult is the fact that on one hand successful improvements oder alterations are not necessarily at their best on one hand, while on the other mechanics of successful efforts may simple not be questioned anymore, just because the game as such was well received.
Another thing is the deceptive character of the succession. HoMM 1 had a very short life cycle, HoMM 2 coming a year later. Homm 3 came 3 years later, and owed its success largely 1) the content increase; 2) The wait command; 3) the increased general complexity without sacrificing simplicity (which FOR ME is the HoMM formula: halfway complex game element interaction, but overall a simplicity that allows the game to be played by kids - you can proceed fast).
IMO, HoMM 4 was against expectations, Heroes replacing a lot of creatures on the battlefield AND - and that's the more serious thing to consider - changing the complexity/simplicity ratio: the divisional attack/defense system is not easy to calculate, the BF is more complex, creature movement increases turn options, the addition of consumables, cluttering the inventory ... all along the line the game LOST something - and HoMM 6 repeating the mistake by making the math too complex and fractioned (HoMM 5 did it with the logarhithmic curves for creature spell damage, for example, and of course with the real-time like initiative bar, simply because with this kind of init bar there is no prediction of actions changing initiative values, which loses something of the clear battle concept of HoMM 3).
Conclusion and bottom line is this: the game design must combine complex elements in a simple way (in itself an argument against Heroes in the battlefield, because balancing single characters with big unit stacks is simply too demanding and needs a lot of "stretching" - who needs immortality potions? You simply CANNOT bring Heroes TRULY (that is, alone) on the battlefield in this game and combine this element with the others IN A SIMPLE WAY.
Likewise, you should have seen that the ability system in HoMM 6 would suck with the presentation in the game alone: your hero levels up and you can review what, ELEVEN pages of abilities? If they couldn't come up with an intuitive solution for displaying things on ONE page, they should have scrapped it there and then.
So that is MY First of Law of HoMM Design: make elements as complex as possible but have the elements work and interact in a simple way. There is nothing wrong having a town with 40 or more buildings, but obviously, the more complex a town gets, the less (of those) you want to see on the map, until the point comes when you have to find new ways to keep it simple overall.
Which is where the design has to be creative. You can have as many fancy idea as you like, but the implementation must not destroy the overall, well, let's replace "simplicity" with "smoothness".
Now, let me end this long post with checking this concept against what happens with a unit on the BF in HoMM 6.
If you right click on a unit you may see any number of icons once a battle starts: effects of the current week; passive creature abilities, resistancies and vulnerabilities; passive hero abilities influencing the unit (of both sides). Any number of additional effects may be added during the battle.
Question: Is that a good thing? Answer: NO, of course not, because there is so much relevant information that you may get lost between it - and may have non idea what will actually happen why when you hit another unit, except that the tooltip is showing something.
Of course, having many influential things in combat isn't bad per se - keep in mind, a mechanic may be complex, it must just be smoothly implemented.
So First Law says: if you want to have many abilities and conditions, let them work with the same basic stat and let them work in a linear way. So this would mean - reduce everything to integers that can be added and subtracted. Or: Keep the Math simple!
If that doesn't work -> game design sucks (or design isn't inventive enough).
It IS that simple.
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DoubleDeck
Promising
Legendary Hero
Look into my eyes...
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posted February 04, 2014 12:21 PM |
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Great post JJ, nice summary of the history of Heroes 
Gosh I remember the nightmare in H4 having to try and keep your hero with full troops with micro-managing the daily creature growths!
Your last paragraph also is a good point with losing the important info in all the detail....that's what I like especially in H5. In a battle (especially duels) hero stats is all you needed to look at to see who might have upper hand. This was simple, but did not mean who was gonna win, due to the complexity of skill system and usage thereof.
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Storm-Giant
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
On the Other Side!
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posted February 04, 2014 02:36 PM |
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JollyJoker said:
(which FOR ME is the HoMM formula: halfway complex game element interaction, but overall a simplicity that allows the game to be played by kids - you can proceed fast).
This is very true. The game was released when I was 8 and I still enjoyed a lot, it was very easy to play.
JJ, I have to ask you. Do you think daily growth could be a worthy addition to future games of the series?
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted February 04, 2014 03:19 PM |
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Yes and no..
I thought that daily growth would have been the far superior mechanic for HoMM VI with its creature pool, its prerequisite-less money buildings and with the fact that there were so many growth-changing builds, artefacts, skills and outside dwellings - but limited resources: with former HoMM games weekly growth was charming insofar that it gave a stable frame in which building order doesn't matter, which means, there is something like a "weekly plan": get dwelling X on day 7, and everything is right, while the economy buildings were tied to prerequisites: you could go for one of them, then go for dwellings.
With HoMM 6, though, it would have been interesting to MAXIMIZE troop count versus economy via daily growth - the sooner you'd get something done, the more you'd profit, something quite logical with a view on the fact that money stopped to be the tight spot, but resources.
However, logistically spoken, the Creature Pool and Daily growth mix well - the question is, whether it wouldn't be too much temptation for micro-management without the Creature Pool, which has fallen from grace (since it sucks with weekly growth).
Bottom line is, it's a pity that HoMM 6 did NOT try daily growth. This would be something I personally would like to see modded, if possible, to see the effect.
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Storm-Giant
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
On the Other Side!
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posted February 04, 2014 03:36 PM |
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Hum, cool. When I used to play Heroes 4, it was one of the changes of the game that I found interesting. Not necessarily better, just different 
Thank you for the answer.
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Maurice
Hero of Order
Part of the furniture
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posted February 04, 2014 08:19 PM |
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It's one of the features of HoMM IV that I despised, but that's personal preference. JJ already stated that the feature would have people for it and against it and I think he's right.
The micromanagement aspect is one of the things I disliked about it, because I'm a completionist in nature. Knowing that when you press that "next turn" button there will be more troops to recruit was something I actually disliked, because it appealed too much to me to just stay put with my Hero until the next day, so I could buy those extra troops. And that every day. While not readily present all the time while playing, it was something that got under my skin and itched.
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted February 04, 2014 08:41 PM |
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Same thing with me - only for different reasons. I felt compelled to manage logistics and supply/caravans each day and had a ton of caravans active, lots of them with only a couple of troops.
Which the Creature Pool would solve, obviously.
Your problem, though ...
It's more like weekly production gives you a natural time of attack, while daily forces you to think different.
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DoubleDeck
Promising
Legendary Hero
Look into my eyes...
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posted February 04, 2014 08:57 PM |
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You can't plan with daily growth....it's too....what's the word...chaotic.
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted February 04, 2014 09:17 PM |
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That's a strange opinion. Did you ever play AoW?
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted February 04, 2014 10:22 PM |
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Well, AoW deals with single unit stacks, units cost upkeep and the growth is not automatic. Very different scenario as far as I'm concerned.
That is not to say that I agree with daily growth being chaotic. It's just.. annoying. For me, part of the heroes fun is knowing what you have for the week and having to plan ahead with that in mind. It also doesn't require you to buy units everyday. In pathetically small doses 
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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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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted February 04, 2014 11:23 PM |
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@JJ:
I think the concept of complexity through simplicity very well sums up much of what was good about the better versions of the Heroes games. I don't quite share your affection for H4 even though it did have some good features, but I think you are correct about the places where H4 went wrong: The battlefield was not only "more complex" but a complete disaster, units would frequently wander off in the complete opposite direction of where you wanted them to go because it turned out that there was some unseen obstacle between them and the target. That killed any attempt at strategic combat. The per-day creature growth was bad because it killed the idea of strategic planning of when to build new buildings and when to attack an enemy. And while I don't think the idea of heroes on the battlefield was bad, the execution clearly was horrible.
I think it's worth noting that before H6 came out, the idea of removing random elements was supported by many fans of the series who felt the randomness of H5 skills and spells subtracted from the game. H6 clearly goes to show that the randomness also goes to ensure replayability, so there was definitely a large element of "careful what you wish fore" there - but at least I'm pretty sure they learned that lesson from H6.
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SepSpring
Known Hero
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posted February 05, 2014 06:53 AM |
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The recruitment system would be more logical if each creature dwelling produced units weekly, but depending on the day of its construction.
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted February 05, 2014 07:01 AM |
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Wait, wait.
About daily growth - you must be kidding.
First of all, Daily Growth is implemented in GOLD- and RESOURCE income - strangely enough, no one is complaining about not getting all money and resources for the week on day 1, in order to be able to plan building ahead, right? Instead, everyone is happy, getting and spending things on a daily basis - no problem at all -, and strangely enough BUILDING on a daily basis is considered strategic whily BUYING CREATURES is not.
Weekly growth for creatures has nothing to do with "strategic planning", sorry to burst that bubble. In connection with daily growth in economic parts it simply sets priorities: you can foresee what you will be able to do by calculating what you will get until the deadline, and going from there you can set an order of builds BECAUSE FOR DWELLINGS THE ORDER OR EXACT POINT DOESN'T MATTER, as long as it's within the week.
In other words - you don't LOSE anything, whether you build something on day 1 or on day 7.
With Daily Growth on all fronts, however, IT MATTERS. If EVERYTHING grows from the point of building, the EXACT order of building becomes important since YOU LOSE something for everything you don't build. With weekly growth you have a priority: economy before creatures, since with economy every day counts, with creatures however, it's only the weeks. With Daily Growth - it's up to you.
That in turn means, that daily growth is making it more difficult, since setting priorities is up to you: you can still favor the economy to be on the "safe" side with money and all, but in that case you already may have been giving away creature production. You have to OPTIMIZE the balance between economy and production, AND you have to set creature priorities, which, in a tier-system, isn't all that easy either, compared with a game like HoMM 4 where you don't build many creature dwellings at all.
The same is true for starting an offensive - no tricks, no pre-set priorities: all up to you.
Now. Look at HoMM 6. We have the creature pool there - with Weekly Growth somewhat "dumbing the game down". We also have conversion - with weekly growth somewhat thankless, because conquest does gain only on day 7. There is also the fact that upgrades add to creature production and that the Town Halls and Fortifications can largely be build without much prerequisites.
Lastly there are only 3 Resources - there isn't much PLANNING involved with weekly growth, since your builds are pretty limited, and Town Halls/Market are building themselves more or less automatically.
And at that point daily growth obviously falls into place because all these things smooth each other out with daily growth:
1) Creature Pool's positive effects on reducing logistics hit home, but daily growth makes sure it's not a massive advantage.
2) Conquest and conversion have an effect from the next turn on
3) Building gets a massive kick to interesting, since the order of building suddenly makes a difference. And
4) Flagging targets shifts priorities as well, since the outside dwellings now work like mines.
5) And lastly, comparing HoMM 4 creature production with HoMM 6 - with HoMM 4 there isn't much of a choice, since you can more or less build only THREE creature dwellings (the 2 level ones are often pre-built, and if not, cost and prerequisites make sure your only decision is the alternative on each level,since the order is determined), but with FOURTEEN creature dwellings instead, things start to get way more interesting.
All in all, Daily Growth in HoMM 6 would have been worth a big shot - there can be no doubt about that, and I don't see any discussing it there. The only question is, whether Daily Growth would be worth to consider for further games.
Now, I'm at a point where I would say, give daily growth a shot, no matter what, just for the sake of having to think different for once, come the next game, but I realize that if HoMM 6 had just the right features to make it good, it probably won't happen, since I'd say logistically, without the creature pool, it adds too much POSSIBLE micro-management, and HoMM 6 did manage to discredit the pool so much so, that it probably is finished for good.
This is by the way something I am REALLY pissed about thinking about HoMM 6 - most new features are implemented so badly that they are compromised, although they might have been rather good, actually.
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DoubleDeck
Promising
Legendary Hero
Look into my eyes...
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posted February 05, 2014 07:38 AM |
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I hear your points JJ, I just found daily growth to be annoying. Agree with Elvin on the planning for the week ahead, and also getting pathetically small amounts of troops every day in H4 seemed too much to micro-manage.
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted February 05, 2014 08:25 AM |
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Yeah, I'm not going to agree with you on that one. Weekly growth might be dumbing down the game, but that's not an issue for me. I feel that the weekly growth often made me consider my options a lot more - will I get to build liches before day 7, or should I prioritize the castle to increase overall growth, or should I make a shot at that mercury over there guarded by those pesky archers to get bone dragons? Sure, with daily growth, every choice matters, but at the same time the difference becomes so small that it loses significance - certainly, getting liches before the castle will perhaps provide me with one more day's growth of liches, but in the big picture, one lich more or less will not decide the game. On the other hand, with weekly growth, the difference between one week's growth more or less in early game was very significant, and as such I felt the choice had a much larger impact on the game. Sure, the fact that you could snipe a castle from someone by getting there on day 7 instead of day 1 may seem silly and unrealistic, but at the same time, those were the things that made the game fun. With daily growth, it all ended up being "whatever", because day 7 and day 1 were exactly the same.
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What will happen now?
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted February 05, 2014 08:49 AM |
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That's not a correct analysis.
The considerations you mention have nothing to do with weekly or daily growth, but just with
a) the considerably more dwellings to build in every game except HoMM 4 and
b) the significant PERCENTAGE growth of the Castle in HoMM 3 and HoMM 5.
It's no function of the weekly/daily growth.
If you consider this a few second more and envision daily growth for HoMM 3 and 5, your considerations will not be, will I build Liches or Castle THIS WEEK, but instead be will I build Liches or Castle FIRST, the main difference being, that with weekly growth it is absolutely clear what you will be missing, while with daily growth, this is only a MAXIMUM calculation, since freeing resources and building both in quicker succession will lessen the trade-off.
Also, the day 1 conquest stopped being fun once it became mechanical. At this point I could mention the fun of conquering a high-cost town in HoMM 2 with low-cost troops, because there it didn't matter which day you made the conquest to get a fat prize, versus the idiotic self-sufficiency of HoMM 3 and 5 economies, but I won't.
IMO, day 1 conquest is annoying at this stage of the game's life cycle.
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