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| Thread: Governors: a new take on the whole concept | |
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Maurice
Hero of Order
Part of the furniture
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posted October 21, 2015 03:56 PM |
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Governors: a new take on the whole concept
Back when Heroes 4 was launched, the developers introduced the concept of Governors, which had various effects. After the switch to UbiSoft, the concept was abandoned again, until it was re-introduced in Heroes 7. It's nice to see a new addition that may provide tactical choices to the player. However, like many concepts, I feel that there is more potential to be had, something that can play a bigger role ingame. Essentially, it gives the player more control of the function of a given Town and the overall strategy to win the map.
As such, I would propose a number of changes.
First of all, really make a Governor mean something for the Town. This means a continuous presence, which is at odds with the role of Adventuring Hero (either with a few troops, with a massive army, or anything in between).
First change: let the player choose the role of the Hero: Adventurer or Governor. When the player selects a Hero to become a Governor, the Hero is removed from the adventure map as an active unit. Hero stats can still be checked in a general Hero overview as well as when examining the Town. At any time during the game, the player can change an Adventurer to Governor and vice-versa, by dragging the portrait to the corresponding slot. This has a few further implications:
1) The Governor is also the defacto Garrison commander in case of siege defense. When there is also an Adventurer present, the player gets to choose which of these two will lead the army present in the Town during the actual battle (just like the player chooses which troops to use during the battle);
2) Governor attributes only apply to the Town when the Hero in question was Governor as the players' turn started;
First change, alternative: make an explicit split between Heroes and Governors. In this form, Governors are assigned to a Town but can never be a Hero or vice versa. The player hires Governors just like Heroes, except Governors have no troops of their own, nor a Skillwheel. A few implications exist here, though:
1) Governors cannot act like Garrison commanders during battles, since they lack Hero Skills;
2) Transferring Governors from one Town to another has to be done differently than Heroes;
Since Governors have no active adventuring role, it makes very little sense to have Governor Perks among the normal skills. They would have to do fieldwork to understand how to run a Town?
Second change: split off the Governor Perks from the Skills as they currently exist ingame and design specific Governor Skills, independent of the already existing Skills. They don't form a part of the standard Skillwheel, but rather have their own format. Implications:
1) The slots that are emptied in the Skillwheels need to be filled up with new Perks;
2) A new scheme has to be designed, to hold the Governor Perks, ordered in several categories (see the third change);
3) Since Governors don't normally defeat enemies, they also don't gain experience in the traditional way. Logically, they would "learn by doing", so they should gain experience for being a Governor. This experience is separate from Adventuring experience and is gained for every turn they are acting like a Governor. Just like Adventurers, Governors gain levelups in the Governor area and get points they can invest in Governor Perks to increase their effectiveness as Governor;
4) Also, since Governors add a boost to a Town, it's logical to assign a Hero to each Town. This means the overall number of available Heroes needs to increase, too;
5) Allowing Heroes to switch between Governor and Adventurer means you can move a Governor from one Town to another;
Third change: to diversify Governors, the various Perks need to be placed under specific functional areas. Four such areas can be defined: "Architect", which deals with building up a Town, "Spy Master", which handles the spy and counter-spy network, the "Economist", who is responsible for the Town's income and infrastructure and finally the "Town Defender", tasked with perparing for and defending the Town in case of an enemy invasion. The various existing Governor Perks can be placed under these four categories. Some can be split up across various Tiers, some new ones can easily be invented: for instance, for the "Spy Master" the Dungeon effects can be added, where Dungeon Spy Masters gain a boost. Also, creature growth boosters can be added under "Town Defender". Some implications exist:
1) Since Town construction is mostly relevant early game, whereas the other three areas become more important late(r) game, the "Architect" Perks should be relatively low level, accessible right away from Governor Level 1. The other three areas should essentially form specialisations, accessible at higher Governor Levels;
2) Enough Perks should be available in each of the three areas to only exhaust the options in longer games, with higher Tier Perks being more powerful - this will drive players to specialise in one of the three areas for each Town: Defense, Economy or Spying. Depending testing of this system, an alternative may be to have the player choose one of the three fields of expertise, blocking off the other two;
3) To make best use of this system, it should follow a free-format Perk selection, although random should be allowed to the player in case such is desired;
Fourth change: Town Buildings should exist that can help the Governor perform his role (like the Thieves' Guild, or Growth boosters for creatures). This means the current Town building scheme should be inspected closely to see which buildings fall under which Governor type and make some logically exclusive selections there. The Town structure may have to be redesigned somewhat to accomodate this.
For instance, an "Economist" might be able to build a Resource Silo as well as an Alchemist Lab, but when he leaves Town, the Alchemist Lab may cease to function or the Resource Silo and Alchemist Lab simply produce less.
Likewise, a "Town Defender" might be able to boost overall creature Growth, or have access to more Growth boosters than the others (the extra ones cease to function when he leaves Town). Also, having a "Town Defender" may give the option to have both versions of a Growth booster active when a choice has to be made. For instance for Haven, where the player has to select between Marksman or Wolf Growth booster: a Town Defender who builds it still selects the primary creature just in case he ever leaves Town, but while he's Governor of that Town, the Growth booster increases growth for both Marksmen and Wolves.
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ThatRedSarah
Famous Hero
Adventuring Hero
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posted October 21, 2015 04:49 PM |
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Hi!
Great idea Maurice 
I prefer the "basic version" of the FirstChange rather than the alternative. Heroes could adventure around and then settle to govern some town for a while and so on.
Second+ThirdChange is super interesting. I like the two separate experience/skillwheel ideas quite a lot. And having different kind of governor type due to the different skills is nice and tactical (economy/defense/growth/spying). 
Linking the skills and governors to town buildings as in FourthChange is a good idea and bring a lot of tactical variety to town building.
All in all this is something i would really enjoy in Homm game. This provides so many different tactics and options (something that the current games are increasingly lacking in my opinion)
Good job!
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MeTaNoV
Hired Hero
In Heroes We Trust!
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posted October 21, 2015 05:29 PM |
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Governors is indeed a nice addition, and your revamp is indeed a path to follow to make it more strategic and enjoyable.
My few cents as addition to your proposal:
First change:
- the hero could stay on the list but grayed out (with town icon) to enable quick access to it and remember that you have some governors around!
- add a cooldown when you change the state of a hero from Adventurer to Governor and vice-versa. (like 1-2 weeks)
- if you change from one city to another, make it travel at the pace of a caravan, or if both cities have town portal, he could travel instantly
Second change:
- point 4) and 5) goes in First change!
- nothing else to add at the moment, the four categories you mentioned is a great start
Third change:
- could be merged with second change?
Fourth change:
- for the growth booster, make it relative to the number of days as governor on a week or provide the bonus on a daily basis (though it would break the current weekly growth scheme)
Great job!
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TDL
Honorable
Supreme Hero
The weak suffer. I endure.
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posted October 21, 2015 10:02 PM |
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I generally like this new approach.
Truth be told, I had a somewhat similar idea to yours in relation to how there could be two separate skillsets, one for the governance of the kingdom and the other for the individual heroes. In such a case, all the skills that tie into the growth of the kingdom (ie, nobility, governor, logistics, resourcefulness, etc.) would fall under the gubernatorial umbrella, whereas the remaining warfare/battlefield-oriented skills would then be levelled by the hero(es).
The experience would be accrued as the total of the entire collective of heroes under the kingdom's disposal. The good thing about it is that new heroes would not provide any imbalances (such as buying a secondary/tertiary hero who just power levels governor/nobility) and would also not skew the potential benefits, as they'd fit under the same umbrella and collectively raise the level of the kingdom.
My idea is somewhat similar to what Bioware did in DA: Inquisition. They had two separate experience/levelling-trees, one concerning the growth of the entire organisation, the other concerning the level ups of the characters. While the experience was accrued in different methods, it was really done well, which inspired me to look for potential options that could be applied to homm. I suggest you look into that.
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TD
Promising
Famous Hero
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posted October 21, 2015 10:54 PM |
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I like the idea of separate governor skill-wheel. The spying gov specialization feels a bit weird to me though. Only team that seems to really get use of that is dungeon with sabotage/plunder while rest of the teams would avoid that like a plague(or maybe I missed something).
I'm happy to see you take emphasize to the town rather than AoC combat boosts like the current system, which I consider very boring. Would be nice to see something to boost creatures growth or globally single creature stats(which would increase their price too) as specialized selection along with spy, economy and defense. As trade-off you would need stronger economy to recruit all that and/or more adventuring to get the gold/resources.(The current boost is only for cores in skill-tree which seems rather pointless). The way you described the growth being tied to booster buildings would once again exclude champions so I had to put that up as separate skill(so tired of champions getting stomped by cores!).
Anyhow great job, much better than the currrent gov-system in h7
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Maurice
Hero of Order
Part of the furniture
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posted October 21, 2015 11:18 PM |
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Edited by Maurice at 23:19, 21 Oct 2015.
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MeTaNoV said:
Governors is indeed a nice addition, and your revamp is indeed a path to follow to make it more strategic and enjoyable.
My few cents as addition to your proposal:
I mainly made the division among the changes and their implications to get bite-sized chunks  . I guess a bit of re-ordering them can't hurt, but hopefully the concept I envision is clear enough.
TD said:
The spying gov specialization feels a bit weird to me though. Only team that seems to really get use of that is dungeon with sabotage/plunder while rest of the teams would avoid that like a plague(or maybe I missed something).
Keep in mind that you can't suffice the system I propose by just taking the current Governor Perks from the various skills. You are going to have to expand it, add more.
Especially with respect to the Spy Master, I would assume that the current Spy information has a maximum expiration date (and not be granted indefinately once you spied on some item once). In my concept, all factions get the options to plunder and sabotage - it's just that Dungeon gets a significant bonus to it, due to their sneakiness. But a Spy Master also has the option to pick counter-spy Perks, which means an enemy Spy attempt may sometimes fail on their missions.
But also the AoC isn't forgotten. Town Defenders could create blockades to slow down advancing armies (and I mean real map objects, that the enemy has to negate somehow). Maybe even control destructable bridges without having to actually move up to them, as long as they're within the AoC? Although that might be better for Spy Masters, sabotaging your own Bridges . Stuff like that. Economists can boost the income from Mines within the AoC or perform a stripmining action to deny enemy Heroes the option to plunder it (in essence, stripmining works the same as plundering, only you get (part of) the resources in that case, not the enemy). Town Defenders may actually grant Mines a Local Guard, so "empty" Heroes can't easily plunder your Mines. Spy Masters may prevent enemy sabotage actions of Mines, or restore Mines back to working order faster than normal after being plundered (since they could anticipate the enemy better, they could take countermeasures against potential damage or something).
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Stevie
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
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posted October 22, 2015 12:38 AM |
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I think if you go to the extent of separating things, you should look at all areas of expertise, not only governors. I think the necessity here is to have 4 different categories - Combat skills, Adventure skills, Magic skills and Kingdom skills. This should cover most of what a hero could do. There are ways I can see this working, but I won't develop on them. I'll just say that the idea behind would be to have more activities generating "currency" that you can spend on hero skills. Right now we have one wide pool of skills which you slowly acquire with leveling points. If there were 4 different ones, you'd then for example acquire spell skills by casting more, adventure skills by traveling and discovering treasures and locations, etc. In this way your hero develops naturally in the direction you make him to. Don't know how viable this is, but an idea at the very least.
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Guide to a Great Heroes Game
The Young Traveler
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monere
Bad-mannered
Supreme Hero
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posted October 22, 2015 08:53 AM |
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Stevie said:
you'd then for example acquire spell skills by casting more, adventure skills by traveling and discovering treasures and locations, etc. In this way your hero develops naturally in the direction you make him to. Don't know how viable this is, but an idea at the very least.
I thought about this, too some while ago
I don't think this is feasible, though, because each main hero of each player will have to do all of these (maybe except for the kingdom management stuff, which nearly always is secondary heroes' job).
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted October 22, 2015 09:18 AM |
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Actually - is that really different from what HoMM 4 did?
1 "Governor" skill (Nobility with subskills Estates, Mining, Diplomacy)
1 "Adventure" skill (Scouting with subskills Pathfinding, Seamanship, Stealth)
1 Combat skill (think of it as hero attack skill)
1 Tactic skill (Offense, Defense, Leadership)
plus 1 skill for each of the magic schools.
Add to that the concept of giving heroes a class depending on their development (defined by the first two skills with a level in a subskill with one exception), and as a system it was quite impressive. H7 could use Heroes with 100 Levels.
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monere
Bad-mannered
Supreme Hero
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posted October 22, 2015 09:31 AM |
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Edited by monere at 09:32, 22 Oct 2015.
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JollyJoker said:
Actually - is that really different from what HoMM 4 did?
1 "Governor" skill (Nobility with subskills Estates, Mining, Diplomacy)
1 "Adventure" skill (Scouting with subskills Pathfinding, Seamanship, Stealth)
1 Combat skill (think of it as hero attack skill)
1 Tactic skill (Offense, Defense, Leadership)
plus 1 skill for each of the magic schools.
Add to that the concept of giving heroes a class depending on their development (defined by the first two skills with a level in a subskill with one exception), and as a system it was quite impressive. H7 could use Heroes with 100 Levels.
While I do like H4 a bit more than its successors (H5-H7) I never actually liked the skill system
On the other side I liked the spells more than all all other spells in the entire Heroes franchise (dragon strength, giant strength, vampiring touch, aura of fear, mass fortune & misfortune, mass precision, forgetfulness, mass slow, martyr, the wards, and so many other spells... I just love those  )
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Maurice
Hero of Order
Part of the furniture
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posted October 22, 2015 09:48 AM |
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I think Stevie's suggestion to split up the Skills across four different "fields of expertise" is a good one. It's something I've been thinking about as well. However, I think that such a consideration would be worthy of its own topic; the reason I explicitely picked out Governor Skills was because it's now only implicitely embedded within the Skillwheels, whereas Might, Magic and Adventure Skills are explicitely present. As such, splitting those three is a slightly different approach from establishing Governor skills as the fourth leaf of the clover.
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kiryu133
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Highly illogical
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posted October 22, 2015 01:07 PM |
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I've given the subject some thought and in my mind, the best solution would probably be to have governor as a skill with the basic > expert > master just give some general improvement to the town (like some extra income) but make the perks/individual skills completely dependent on the other skills. for example, you could get the master Governor ability just fine, assign the hero to a town and get some of that income. However the hero can't get any of the sub-skills of the governor tree by themselves as they all have pre-requisites in other skills. For example, a bonus to attack and/or controlling the arrow towers is a perk but it can only be picked if the hero is also proficient in War machines. another would be adding some movement bonus in the town AoC that would only be available to heroes who also have the exploration skill.
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It is with a heavy heart that I must announce that the cis are at it again.
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Maurice
Hero of Order
Part of the furniture
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posted October 22, 2015 01:52 PM |
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Cross-Skill requirements currently don't exist, so that would be a new one. While I like the idea of cross-Skill requirements, I'm not sure if they would work with regards to Governors; Adventure, Might & Magic Skills all reflect the power of the Heroes as we know them, but Governors are a different occupation from the adventuring Hero who is actively out in the field, hunting.
In this line of thinking, I'd rather see a 3-tiered Governor Perk with regards to arrow towers, under the Town Defender specialisation:
1) Enables the use of Arrow Towers during Siege defense;
2) Gives manual control of the Arrow Towers during Siege defense;
3) Adds an extra shot each round to Arrow Towers during Siege defense;
But to be honest, with regards to Arrow Towers, I'd rather have it the way it was done in H6, where you need troops inside the Towers for them to shoot at all. I was more thinking in the following way:
- Fortified walls can be used by units to stand on, behind the battlements;
- Units on either side of the wall, on the ground, have no direct visual link (and can therefore also not shoot eachother), unless the gate is opened, the wall is breached, etc ...;
- Units behind battlements gain cover for ranged attacks (with respect to the area outside the walls);
- Units behind battlements gain extra ranged damage due to vantage point;
- Attackers get the option to scale the walls with ladders, making them more vulnerable while scaling them;
- Catapult hits on the battlements also damage units covering behind the battlements that gets hit;
- Arrow Towers do not shoot by themselves, but will shoot when units are placed "inside" it (make towers half-open towards the rear, so you can still see the units);
- Ranged units placed inside Arrow Towers deal additional damage (so it makes sense to place Ranged units in there, instead of melee units);
- Units inside Arrow Towers gain additional benefit of cover (with respect to the area outside the walls);
- While destroying wall sections, units might get trapped on the battlements if stairs leading up to them are just in a select few places. As such, for gameplay purposes, I would suggest to allow access to the battlements from any adjacent tile in the courtyard, at a rather high movement cost;
In this form, fortifications not only add to the hitpoints of the walls, but also to the protection offered by the battlements and towers.
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magnomagus
Admirable
Legendary Hero
modding wizard
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posted December 03, 2015 11:48 AM |
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