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| Thread: The number one thing that did not evolve beyond Heroes 2 and 3? | |
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sirironfist
Known Hero
King of the ogres
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posted August 19, 2020 01:50 PM |
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The number one thing that did not evolve beyond Heroes 2 and 3?
I'm talking about AI.
I played one of the two XG maps that Heroes 2 comes with recently. I started out as knight on 200%, with very low amounts of resources at the beginning. I had quite a rough start, was really happy to find a town where I could buy 6 liches. That's the point in the game when things are really engaging. You just know there are tons of heroes out there that have a larger army than you do. That's when you're really happy about every little thing you can grab your hands around that makes you a little stronger. But then I moved a little further and found a sorcerer town with 12 black dragons not yet recruited. So that's where things go from "oh, this game is really exciting" to "meh, I might as well just stop the game right here" (which I did).
The AI of Heroes 2 is good enough to make for fun gameplay most of the time, eventhough it has its flaws like the one stated above. I think Heroes 3 slightly improved AI, although sometimes I think that Heroes 2 is actually the tougher game of the two.
I'd make the claim that for the singleplayer experience in this franchise, a good AI is one of the most important things. The horrible AI of Heroes 7 was the thing that annoyed me the most about it. I actually quite like Heroes 6 in some ways, but again, you gotta be really stupid to lose a game.
Look at chess. The AI there can challenge even the really good players. Heroes is more multifaceted of course, but is it really so hard nowadays to make a decent AI for a game like Heroes? Either Ubisoft didn't manage to do it or they didn't understand the importance of it. Actually, maybe they just didn't care, since you will only notice the bad AI after you have already purchased the thing.
I hope my English is readable. To be honest, this might be more of a rant than an actual question. But I'd still like to hear your opinions and thoughts about it, if you have any. 
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Lord_Immortal
Famous Hero
DoR Dev Team
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posted August 19, 2020 02:21 PM |
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Tbh I think that Ubisoft wanted to do as many changes and innovations as possible. See, a Heroes of Might and Magic game is founded over two pillars:
1. Map gameplay which should resemble grand strategy as much as possible.
2. Turn-based combat
Out of the two, Ubisoft has properly implemented only the second (and improved to a certain extent in my opinion with the Core-Elite-Champion). If you see the alpha screens of Heroes V available here and compare them to Heroes V,Heroes VI or Heroes VII, you can see that in the later versions the game drifts farther apart from Grand Strategy style which was characteristic of I-IV to a more Adventure/Role-Playing Game style. I think that up to a certain extent the change in AI is due to the focusing of the team to make the game more RPG-like. Also, the fact that they have to deal with larger (therefore high-detailed) map objects makes them waste, in 3d Modelling/Texturing, time and resources that could be implemented for AI and programming.
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bloodsucker
Legendary Hero
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posted August 19, 2020 02:40 PM |
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sirironfist said:
The horrible AI of Heroes 7 was the thing that annoyed me the most about it.
I think the problem is that there is a great difference of objectives between 3DO and Ubisoft approach to the game. 3DO wanted you to replay the game to exhaustion, then they would create an expansion, to keep you engaged until the next version came out. Ubi wants u to buy the game and leave it in the selves after a trial, so u can buy another.
Both were trying to milk you as much as they could but one with a great product that granted fidelity to the brand, the other with eye-candy, bought up reviews and publicity.
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sirironfist
Known Hero
King of the ogres
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posted August 19, 2020 05:40 PM |
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OhforfSake said:
This is the first time I read about HoMM II XG maps. Do you have a link to such a map or to a thread that discuss it? I'd like to know more about it.
XG is actually just XL. Sorry if I have gotten you all excited.  I am playing the German version, where XL is XG. That's how rumors come to live. 
@Lord Immortal
Interesting perspective. I can't open the first link sadly (access denied...). Maybe that's a good point pro 2D.
@bloodsucker
Ubisoft bought reviews? I already thought they were criminals, but I haven't heard of this.
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bloodsucker
Legendary Hero
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posted August 19, 2020 05:59 PM |
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I can't prove it.
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sirironfist
Known Hero
King of the ogres
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posted August 20, 2020 11:01 AM |
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Good points. I am not wishing for an AI that's as strong as a good chess AI though. Just one that's a bit cleverer and less predictable. We could have more options for different difficulties then. Why not have 20 different difficulty tiers? Some maps will be impossible with an even tougher AI. But the ones that are made for multiplayer could do with a higher difficulty most of the time.
In my case from above I was lucky. I had enough gold to purchase 8 of those dragons right away. And that was relatively early in the game. So I could be sure that 8+ blackies would be enough to make things pretty easy. The sorcerer player himself had recruited 2 dragons at that point. Also, I am physically unable to just NOT recruit those dragons. I mean, who does not want to recruit 12 dragons?
Maybe it's an issue with the game itself though. Maybe it would not be the worst idea, if there was a limit on how many units one hero can have. Maybe it should depend on the level of the hero (a high level general can command much more troops than a "noob" general). I mean, why would my dumb level 8 knight have the authority to command 12 black dragons anyways?
The moment when one single hero has the biggest army of the game is usually the moment when things stop being challenging. As you said we can restrict ourselves. I could have taken only 4 dragons and given the other ones to another hero. But then again, I don't want to. As stated above, a part of me simply really wants all of those dragons.
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RerryR
Promising
Supreme Hero
Researching Magic
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posted August 20, 2020 11:26 AM |
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If you play heroes 3 with ERA or H3TSW Mod (basically H2 just with ERA) you might be interested in the Difficulty Mod I wrote to make the game more challenging. The mod provides several levels of difficulty which can be activated any time during the game or at a specific game-day, this will ensure that game does not become to easy at a certain point. I call this option "progressive difficulty". While the mod never got much attention in the English community, I know that some Korean guys use it with great success to keep their game challenging.
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bloodsucker
Legendary Hero
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posted August 20, 2020 12:01 PM |
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That's possibly cause Conquistador was already out... I wish I could get an automation for my maps in HotA.
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zmudziak22
Supreme Hero
Heroes 3 Fan
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posted August 20, 2020 01:48 PM |
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Valery AI Mod was very tough, if you tweak AI to maximum.
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Baronus
Legendary Hero
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posted August 21, 2020 08:45 AM |
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HI&II are simple so its easiest to build good AI. More complicated HIII&IV has worst AI probably they wasnt able reworking all options. In HI you have 25 spells 28 units and maybe 10 abilities. In HIV you have 74 units 60 abilities 11 heroes a lot of potions spells abilities! A lot of options. Hard to ad all possibilities to AI.
Simple is the best. So if you want challengig AI play HI&II big maps 200% hard. Its the best of Heroes.
HIII is middle AI but you can have some troubles. HIV you can play aggainst AI only as adventurer...
HI&II is better if is modded. Especially dragons and peasants. If they have correctly growth. I must maybe give here my ballancing mod. But problem is which exe? We have a lot of versions.
Generally bad is if AI has no gold to buy own units and if you capture city you can buy his units! Prices are to high.
Low level units has to small growth. All of this I was repaired. So after correction HI has really brilliant gameplay better than HIII!
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heymlich
Famous Hero
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posted August 22, 2020 11:20 PM |
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bloodsucker said:
think the problem is that there is a great difference of objectives between 3DO and Ubisoft approach to the game. 3DO wanted you to replay the game to exhaustion, then they would create an expansion, to keep you engaged until the next version came out. Ubi wants u to buy the game and leave it in the selves after a trial, so u can buy another.
+1
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