Sorry, didn't noticed this the first time...
Are you saying this is not an "exploit", they made it on purpose?
In that case please forgive my ignorance in the previous comments. I thought mapmakers had come with those things much latter, completly oversteping the original idea, if that isn't the case then this kind of map was already in their mind and I have but my poor imagination to blame.
No, the maps using the best the editor and all those holes in objects are still maps done in 2000-2003, tew 1-2, Unleashing, Vengence is mine, To kill for power. In my opinion, no map is equal until today to their design and the way they use the editor for this purpose.
To what? Did they made the objects like that on purpose to allow these tricks or not?
I want to say something but it's weird cause I'm going to desagree with the artist about the value of his masterpieces and I am the one praizing his work (I bet this never happens in art school, does it?).
Besides Road to Victory, the maps I find with the most immersive ambience are yours. Of course, then you made a map with so many riddles I never managed to do anything...
Well, nobody can say 100% what they wanted. But they leave on purpose some objects with passability holes, then they added to the editor a passability button. So my bet is that they perfectly knew what people will do with, as they provided all tools to make that easy.
My maps riddles? Nope, Biobob maps have riddles, mine are cupcakes with beginner choices yes/no.
I'm talking about 300, I never managed to do any of gorgo's quests...
I can't talk about Biobob's maps cause I haven't tried them yet. It's kind of Pipeline in a big day, it looks impressive, I know there are people who surf it but... the advantage is one of these days I can try it in a tandem, cause I have a perfect walktrough.
I consider 300 spartans and Star Gate Atlantis to be outside Heroes 3 maps, mostly scenarios designed for the fans of the respective show. As they are in Civilization 4-5 and Skyrim forums, just mods for a certain audience.
Then 300 is from the time where my erm was very bad, so many quests are scripted and imagined by Jim Vogan, which had a neat preference for erm complications over the Heroes natural mechanics.
How to predict and change battlefields in a beneficial way
I hope I understood correctly what you need. Here is the guide! I also uploaded the puzzle file now, I forgot about it before
Biobob said: How to predict and change battlefields in a beneficial way
Tools needed:
H3CombatTerrain, get it here
WoG Editor, get it here
In this example I will be searching for a favorable battlefield for a very simple fight. This is the to be searched in area:
Here I want to place a battle against Azure Dragons that is to be fought with Vampire Lords, in a way that only one stack of Azures can attack the vampires at any given time (this is, in comparison, a very easy to find battlefield. I will get into more complex ones later).
First, choose any tile in the chosen area and read out it's coordinates. In my case, they are 129/27 (it does not matter if subterranean or not). This graphic shows you how to generally read out the coordinates: The upper row is X-Axis, left one is Y-Axis:
Next, start up H3CombatTerrain (I have chinese fonts installed, so it might look a little different to you. It is the .exe with a red icon):
Also, open up the 'bk' Folder (we will need it later):
Now, start up the program. Input the coordinates into the 'X' and 'Y' boxes. You can also check the little box to the right, it will enable the battlefield hex grid:
Now look into the contents of the 'bk' Folder. Here we find the file names of the different terrains (they are named by potencies of two, so are easy to remember: 1-256 for normal terrain and f1-f512 for special terrain):
Next, input all the different terrain codes (1-256, f1-f512) until you find a suitable battlefield. Pro tip: You can quickly change boxes by pressing the 'Enter' Button; after finishing the last entry, the battlefield will refresh: So you can press 'Enter' three times and quickly enter the next code. This saves a lot of time.:
I was not able to find suitable terrain on 129/27, so I move on to 130/27, there I find a good terrain, the bush constellation can be used for my needs.
Note: For more complex battlefields (with, for example, holes in the obstacles, it might take many more steps to find the right tile. Just keep searching)
Place the enemy, and the corresponding terrain. In this case it is easy, because I can easily set Evil Fog and it is covered by the swamp mountain (keep in mind that the hole rectangled area is covered by the Evil Fog, not only the 'visible' area):
Keep in mind, that when you change basic terrain (like snow, sand, etc.), it can be spotted on the minimap. It can be disguised by doing it on borders between different terrains however (but also will never become invisible). This is why I usually try to use special terrain for this matter.
What if I need Lucid Pool Ground, but designed my area to be Fiery Fields?
Place a small patch of Fiery Fields:
Then open the Advanced Properties and change the type to Lucid Pool:
Check the result:
That is the most important things you need to know when searching for specific battlefield. Now, get searching
Remember that when in Underground, it does not matter which type of basic terrain you choose! You will always fight on subterranean grounds - this does not go for special terrain however. An example: Snow ground in Underground will yield Subterranean battlefield, while Lucid Pools on snow in Underground will yield Lucid Pool battlefield.
In a similar way, you'll only be able to place a 'shore' battle on a tile within one tile of water, not in underground or on special terrain.
Another tip: Using the slider to the bottom left of H3CombatTerrain.exe, you can change the windows opacity, making it easier to read out coordinates in the background:
bloodsucker said:I have asked this before and I still didn't got an awser but I'm sure someone that reads this thread knows, it so lets try: can AI dismiss useless heroes? If I put an hero with no prims or army stand-still in an unreachable place just as a filler, can AI dismiss it?
It can definitely happen. There was a famous bug in 'The Empire of The World 2' where the God of Fire would vanish from the map, also see description at maps4heroes.
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Biobob, nice posts!
Some of your screenshots in the hidden passage post are not showing passability (dirt, grass, subterranean, rough), not sure if meant to be that way?
Puzzle is cool but requires duplication glitch? I stopped at last quest guards because no other way to get 12 gloves and 12 boots
Have we got any insight into when the AI releases them, though? That would be quite a big issue to hear from it so seldomly...
You are right Gotta redo them tomorrow, I must have switched it off by accident.
The end is usage of the bug where the quest is fulfilled when having only 1 item with you. Check it out: Clicking the quest guard with one equestrian glove and one boot of speed will finish the quest. Just switch around artifacts a bit and be done
RoseKavalier said:
It can definitely happen. There was a famous bug in 'The Empire of The World 2' where the God of Fire would vanish from the map, also see description at maps4heroes.
Yeah, I knew about this desapperance but didn't made the association. I was thinking about the uselessness of the hero (no prims, no army) as a motive for dismiss (like we do) but the God of Fire is loaded.
I'm afraid I don't know the specifics in TEW2 which caused God of Fire to be dismissed. Maybe it's something similar to how AI will hire new heroes or not? The solution to prevent the bug was simply to change God Of Fire's colour. Difficulty Levels
I'm having difficulty understanding this: Computer players as a whole will not hire heroes if they already have 14/20 or more among them...
If you choose random 1x7 that means some colours will be limited to 1 or two heroes, so maybe the hardest configuration is 1x3 or 1x4, where they can always hire enouch heroes to have a good expansion rate.
BTW, AI will not free heroes from prison if this condition is met, at least is what I've been observing on my maps.
I'm not 100% certain this information is verified, but it's something I remembered.
Prisons are different from Tavern I think, Metataxer's Revenge clearly shows that red player would open prisons until he had 8 heroes.
Concept is simple enough, each individual player cannot hire more than 3~6 heroes each. If you have 7 computers then the sum of each AI player's hero count can't be above 8~20.
As we all know, AI is notoriously bad at decision making, so setting up timed releases (can be with events, prison farms, ERM, ...) is your best bet at making a challenging AI. In terms of random maps, don't expect too much for expansion even if you give AI tons of troops at start. They'll still make the same stupid decisions of picking up piles of gold instead of killing you.
I think erm is a much better way to fix things instead of trying to hack within the limits. One of the best erm applications is that you can set AI armies as you wish them, they will not mix troops or dismiss them. A battle vs 7 stacks of titans -for example, requires expanding the known tactics.
Another good application is that you can bring an AI hero on map when you want, with the troops you want, and also force him to go where you want. Also a capital application is that you can remove spells from main player, then give them back. An optimal design would have been, for me, to enable scrolls as quest artifacts, so you get a scroll of force field in zone a then you need to give back the scroll for going in zone b.
Yes, definetivelly WoG is better then SoD from the mapmaker's point of view (it's natural, it was created with that objective) but I pretty much like Cove (for now is my favorite town) and map is for HotA, so what I asked needs to be doable in HotA/SoD terms.
With the possibility to change monolith subtypes allowing basically as many unique portals as you want (wonder if Biobob tested for limit?), it should be possible to create SoD/HotA maps where you can send enemy heroes to specific areas and prevent them from mixing army. At least, that's what I've been working on lately.
If playing on WoG platform, then yes ERM reigns supreme from what I've seen in my short time using it!
The problem I often noticed in SoD is that there is no way to force AI doing a move, past month 5-6 or so. Some heroes get stuck out from nowhere and will not move, whatever you do. So you can set a monolith, there is no guarantee that he will take it at any time.
I'm experimenting with heroes released from Prison with personalized monoliths for my SoD map. Hopefully they don't become stupid even if released in late months...
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I (very poorly) wrote this some time ago using AutoIt for the Combat Terrain viewer. It greatly facilitates moving around and changing terrain type to help you look at suitable locations more quickly.
Rather than only giving the compiled version I am also showing source code so others can modify to their liking or compile themselves in case they don't trust a stranger's .exe on the internet.
1. Download AutoIt and put the code in a .Au3 file which you can run or compile for yourself (this is NOT required if you use the compiled module)
2. Launch the Combat Terrain Viewer Program
3. Launch this module
4. Arrows move around the map, limited to XL [0,143]
5. w/s change the terrain type
6. Escape exits the module and gives you back control of the arrow and w/s keys
YES! I love you man, what a great little script!
Actually I think you don't need AutoIt, just running the script should work fine?
Prison heroes usually work fine as long as they've got something to do and are not afraid to charge in. Sometimes however they will consider something not worth getting, this is where it gets complicated...
I updated the visible passability images and added a bit more content to the watery hole post.
Also, here is a little teaser which shows off some mechanics we will discuss in the next article...it is a little adventure, just driven by story.
This thread is pages long: 
posted June 06, 2016 04:35 PM
Gotta redo them tomorrow, I must have switched it off by accident.
