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| Thread: Town Portals |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 · «PREV |
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Gryphs
Supreme Hero
The Clever Title
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posted December 01, 2014 10:15 AM |
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Edited by Gryphs at 10:16, 01 Dec 2014.
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Maurice said:
Gryphs said:
You could cast it but it would take a whole day to move your army, and would remove all your movement points.
So you move with your army until 1 movement point remains and then you teleport? No, I think there should be a minimum amount of movement points left before you can cast it, perhaps even as much as full movement points.
I think I phrased that poorly. I was saying that you lose all your movement points when you cast the spell like when searching for the grail. I am not sure if it would take an entire day's worth of movement points like searching does though.
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Galaad
Hero of Order
Li mort as morz, li vif as vis
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posted December 01, 2014 10:52 AM |
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Edited by Galaad at 10:53, 01 Dec 2014.
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Maurice said:
The end result is that within a single day, all your towns still have a Garrison Commander, while your main Hero also has all creatures produced by your towns that week.
Certainly but it looks like you are assuming all three towns would necessarily be of same race ?
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Zombi_Wizzard
Famous Hero
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posted December 01, 2014 12:29 PM |
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well then how about this:
Make Town Portal a spell, that all can learn and cast it, regardless of might or magic hero. Fuctionality must be so it's not too OP, but that it's still usefull. Every hero learns it at certain lvl ... similar than H5.
Then, simply put checklist of certain adventure spells (TP, but also spells like Water walk and Fly, if they are in game), before any matchup (yes singleplayer maps also, but specialy in hotseat and multiplayer, but not needed in campaign). Like in advanced options. That way you can check or uncheck which spells are allowed in match and which would be "banned".
Then it's simple - those that wish to play with spells like TP can have them and those of us, who prefer no TP, can uncheck it, making it unavailable in match.
Similar could be done with artifacts or even heroes, so you can dissalow certain things from game session. That way you can keep "OP" things in game, and still have competitive enviorment, for those that want.
There!
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Maurice
Hero of Order
Part of the furniture
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posted December 01, 2014 12:33 PM |
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Galaad said:
Maurice said:
The end result is that within a single day, all your towns still have a Garrison Commander, while your main Hero also has all creatures produced by your towns that week.
Certainly but it looks like you are assuming all three towns would necessarily be of same race ?
I do, but I don't see how that's relevant for the issue with Town Portal. It could easily have been that you have 5 towns with 3 being of the 'proper' faction.
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Galaad
Hero of Order
Li mort as morz, li vif as vis
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posted December 01, 2014 12:41 PM |
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Maurice said:
I do, but I don't see how that's relevant for the issue with Town Portal. It could easily have been that you have 5 towns with 3 being of the 'proper' faction.
Hm maybe you are right. My assumption was that without town conversion you would be more likely to give top creatures to your main hero, having mixed Elite/Champion troops (considering the morale issue ofc, leadership etc). Imo your proposition works very well, moreover if Town Portal is level restricted. The spell scroll would be a nice bonus and the feature not that ease of use, but keeping some convenience to some extent or am I missing something ?
It is not perfect but at least basically limiting the town portal to a building seems to me more viable than what was done in previous opuses. I admit I never thought that far on the matter though.
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Maurice
Hero of Order
Part of the furniture
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posted December 01, 2014 01:22 PM |
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Edited by Maurice at 13:22, 01 Dec 2014.
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Galaad said:
Hm maybe you are right. My assumption was that without town conversion you would be more likely to give top creatures to your main hero, having mixed Elite/Champion troops (considering the morale issue ofc, leadership etc).
Well, that's something for the player to consider of course  . It's also one of the situations on which Town Portal has some impact, but only on the side. Still, it's an aspect that needs to be considered.
The main reason I would opt for either a static building somewhere in the landscape as an entry point or a consumable item that costs something, is that you then don't get those endless loops where enemy Heroes approach your town, only to use their own Town Portal the moment you bring your main army back to that town. This happened too often in some Heroes 6 maps, if you ask me.
But even so, such tactics may still happen even with my suggestion in place, only the execution may be different.
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted December 01, 2014 02:03 PM |
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JollyJoker said:
The convenience aspect has been covered by the creature pool - but that was too convenient for many, it would seem. You don't play XL SP maps and suddenly decide you have to be at the other map end - doesn't happen; and you can't do big maps with one hero anyway. Not in HoMM 5 and not in HoMM 6, and in HoMM 6 you not only had the creature pool, the hirable heroes grew in strength according to your main.
Which means, there are a lot of ways to make things convenient without the use of fast travelling devices.
But that is because you're limiting yourself to see only one type of gameplay. In competitive gaming / multiplayer it might not be relevant to "suddenly decide to be on the other map end", but in a more epic scale single-player map, it can. It might not have been relevant in H5 and H6 because these games didn't cater to that game style - for various reasons both coming from game design and game stability - but that doesn't mean this should be neglected (also) in upcoming games.
And here I'm not at all talking about creature recruitement, because that can be handled in other ways (even if creature pool is no more and was a bad solution in the first place), but actually wanting to go from one end of the map to the other for whatever reasons and not having to press "end turn" 20 times in a row just to get it done.
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What will happen now?
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted December 01, 2014 02:25 PM |
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In "a more epic scale single-player map" EVERYTHING can be important, from being able to fly to having an additional creature or skill slot to acquiring certain artifacts to - whatever actually comes to mind. You can't cater for everything that might be important just to cater for it.
I don't care for TP because if it's available at all, it's a must to get it, which makes it redundant in some way.
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Zombi_Wizzard
Famous Hero
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posted December 01, 2014 02:47 PM |
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@ alcibiades:
well ... finaly, i think im starting to grasp, what you were trying to say all this time. Still - TP was, atleast from my point of view, always "meant" to be your "saving card" when your town is under attack... And not means to travel fast across the map - it was used this way for abuse purposes. You have in map portals to do that... aren't those good enough?
TP, teleports your hero, either from any location, to your town (either nearest or any), or from one town, to the other. It dosent teleport you to x location on the map. From this you see, that TP, teleports your hero, from whatever he/she was doing, BACK to previous area, you already own, and not forward. And only reason your hero has, to go BACK is to either: defend your town, get/merge army and/or war machines, or learn spells from magic guild. Since last two are minor reasons, and usualy not worth it, TP is used for the first two purposes.
yes you can also "catch" enemy hero by baiting him to go towards your seamingly empty capital, then ambushing him with TP, or to "lock" AI in his castle with secondary hero, but that's the abusive part, that shouldn't be needed if AI would be better, and not resort to cheating, by knowing locations and precise numbers of your troops, as well as your skills, and calculating pixel perfect all movement points including taking logistics and pathfinding into account. This is the problem (and why i h8 campaigns), and here it should be resolved, and not with TP.
If you think of other scenario, why your hero would use TP, im sorry, but i can't see it. I would be thankfull if you can provide example then?
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bloodsucker
Legendary Hero
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posted December 01, 2014 05:53 PM |
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Zombi_Wizzard said:
@ alcibiades:TP was, atleast from my point of view, always "meant" to be your "saving card" when your town is under attack. You have in map portals to do that... aren't those good enough?
TP, teleports your hero, either from any location, to your town (either nearest or any), or from one town, to the other. It dosent teleport you to x location on the map. From this you see, that TP, teleports your hero, from whatever he/she was doing, BACK to previous area, you already own, and not forward. And only reason your hero has, to go BACK is to either: defend your town, get/merge army and/or war machines, or learn spells from magic guild.
Thank u Z_W, I think u summarized it very well. TP is a wild card to save your ass; specially in maps where you can travel very far before finding another town. In this case u can easly get caught without any town while the time expires.
The main hero is another problem here, if AI is good enouch (like in Heroes 3) you can't have a secondary hero 10 times weaker then your main guarding the capital while he travels far away; any reasonable three weeks main hero AI may have will smash him with half the troops. This was possible in Heroes 4 cause AI sucked; in Heroes V you were forced to teach Mentoring to your main so he could pass 25% of his experience to a nobody or you wouldn't be safe.
I didn't tried Heroes 6 so I can't talk about it but from what I got heroes could be hired at advanced levels, probably to avoid this problems. So, it looks like "convinience" was never the keyword for TP, protect your back was.
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Maurice
Hero of Order
Part of the furniture
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posted December 01, 2014 10:09 PM |
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bloodsucker said:
I didn't tried Heroes 6 so I can't talk about it but from what I got heroes could be hired at advanced levels, probably to avoid this problems. So, it looks like "convinience" was never the keyword for TP, protect your back was.
The mentoring was essentially integrated into the Tavern in that game. Your new Heroes had a higher level depending on the level of your main Hero. I don't recall clearly, but I thought it was at equal level. They also brought more creatures with them.
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Galaad
Hero of Order
Li mort as morz, li vif as vis
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posted December 01, 2014 10:13 PM |
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Maurice said:
The mentoring was essentially integrated into the Tavern in that game. Your new Heroes had a higher level depending on the level of your main Hero. I don't recall clearly, but I thought it was at equal level. They also brought more creatures with them.
I don't recall clearly either, but I don't think they were of equal level. What I do know for sure though is than none of the secondary heroes would benefit the reputation ability.
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kiryu133
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Highly illogical
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posted December 01, 2014 10:31 PM |
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make it a spell that sends hero to clsest town but also add a building limited to 1 per player that can receive teleporting heroes even if there is a closer town? advanced town portal from h6 essentially without the basic form in other words. though you should get a choice to go there or the closest town when you cast the spell...
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OhforfSake
Promising
Legendary Hero
Initiate
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posted December 01, 2014 11:01 PM |
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bloodsucker said:
The main hero is another problem here, if AI is good enouch (like in Heroes 3) you can't have a secondary hero 10 times weaker then your main guarding the capital while he travels far away; any reasonable three weeks main hero AI may have will smash him with half the troops.
Cast and retreat until threats are weak enough for towers to take care of the rest. Not a universal solution though..
bloodsucker said:
This was possible in Heroes 4 cause AI sucked
I played the Pirate's daughter campaign. Not remembering a lot about it, the AI got to build up the barbarian town, build Cyclopses and full fort. My army was about the same size but got decimated.. my scouting said I'd a small advantage though. So I went for quick combat and got the win.. I wondered if I really sucked so bad, so I went to battle and did auto-combat to see the AI lose even worse than me..
The AI has to use quick combat for creeping and real battle against you, but different unit excels at these.. the best example I can think of is the Vampire who is fragile in Quick Combat and superb in standard combat/battle.
The player on the other hand can freely choose and in principle have all battles in standard combat..
But I don't disagree the AI is bad, HoMM 4 does however allow for more creativity because 3 low level spell casters with only level 2 magic from each school can often do a lot of fun stuff together.
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Living time backwards
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted December 01, 2014 11:06 PM |
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Zombi_Wizzard said:
@ alcibiades:
well ... finaly, i think im starting to grasp, what you were trying to say all this time. Still - TP was, atleast from my point of view, always "meant" to be your "saving card" when your town is under attack... And not means to travel fast across the map - it was used this way for abuse purposes. You have in map portals to do that... aren't those good enough?
(...)
If you think of other scenario, why your hero would use TP, im sorry, but i can't see it. I would be thankfull if you can provide example then?
Map portals are fine, but problem is map portals are not always present when and where you need them.
I agree now we seem to understand each other with what we are saying. I think TP as a wild card to protect your town is a wild card and should be prevented if possible. Someone above did have a point about AI being coded so that the only way you could engage him was with TP bait, but obviously that's a matter of AI coding rather than TP concern.
I think the fact that TP allowed you to always carry all your best troops in one army and not care about castle defences shallowed out H3 strategy considerably, and that is what needs to be avoided. This is why I advocate for a town-to-town link model where you need to be in a town in order to go to another town but where you can't multi-zap towns and where you can't do it if not in a town with proper structure and link.
As for examples as to why you might wanna go back to another town not just for defence, I can mention:
- Learn spells
- Buy/transfer artifacts
- Upgrade creatures
- Use unique building like for instance H5 Academy Artificer forge
- Simply go back from a map region which you have finished
Yes all of these can be done with teleporters, but if you have large maps with many towns that becomes an incredibly large amount of teleporters you need to set up, not to mention the trouble of avoiding abuse (enemy should not have acces directly to your doorstep, which can be done with clever use of key guards, but again becomes very cumbersome.
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What will happen now?
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bloodsucker
Legendary Hero
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posted December 01, 2014 11:42 PM |
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OhforfSake said:
But I don't disagree the AI is bad, HoMM 4 does however allow for more creativity because 3 low level spell casters with only level 2 magic from each school can often do a lot of fun stuff together.
The fact that you could win against very powerfull armies just with several mid level heroes was one of the most interesting things in the game and something that would allow you to protect your back (as I said). This doesn't even implies AI to be weak, is just another way of gambling (like trainning Luna with no army to have a secondary hero that is almost as strong as main without dividing the army, in H3).
But if u don't have the capacity to hire trainned heroes (I didn't tried it but it sounds awful to me) you need to find ways of ensure regions. I also didn't became an expert on H5 but I used to let some empty slots of heroes to hire them whennever I took a town (at least if I had succed in giving mentoring to main) so I could move my first army while letting someone conquering the rest of the region. I used to do it - but I hated it.
One thing I liked in H4 more then H3 and H5 was the high amount of penalty for mixing armies. Even just a knight in Order or Nature (to get Tactics) had a noticeable desadvantage. I think this would force us play more with one alignment for hero instead of all Elites in main and the leftovers in other heroes. It looks to me this would constitue a better gameplay.
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Zombi_Wizzard
Famous Hero
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posted December 02, 2014 11:09 AM |
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alcibiades said:
Map portals are fine, but problem is map portals are not always present when and where you need them.
Not having things when and where you need sometimes, makes for an interasting game. That way it forces you to make decisions in advance, taking risks, and work with not optimal circumstances. It's similar things with random skills realy - you have to work with what you got.
alcibiades said:
I think TP as a wild card to protect your town is a wild card and should be prevented if possible.
I don't think having a wild card is a bad idea, but if it's wild card it should work like one, namely being available once a week, or once a month even, so you must make decision of using it or not. So no i don't think it should be prevented at all costs, but rather limited.
alcibiades said:
As for examples as to why you might wanna go back to another town not just for defence, I can mention:
- Learn spells
- Buy/transfer artifacts
- Upgrade creatures
- Use unique building like for instance H5 Academy Artificer forge
- Simply go back from a map region which you have finished
Having portal available once a month, is from my experience enough for all of these. You learn spells by taking and visiting other castles, you don't need to upgrade creatures at daily basis, and your secondary hero probably won't hoard loads of artifacts in few days ... in one month however ...
And if you wanna go back more often, there are map portals, that i think are sufficient. Sure they wont take you to capital in an instant, but 3-4 days travel isn't that bad. And you forget you have secondary heroes also.
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