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| Thread: Heroes 4 The Restoration of Axeoth |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 · «PREV / NEXT» |
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iliveinabox05
Honorable
Famous Hero
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posted March 09, 2022 06:57 PM |
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Baronus said:
How to uprgade Elves and Crossbowmens? Maybe to Waspwort? Fire Elemental rather worst?
Alternative is big bonus to all stats to have the same look. Because may be weird convert to other look.
Crossbowmen could maybe upgrade to Monks, but it's not a natural progression. Not sure about Elves. Waspwort is an option, but there isn't really a good option available that I can think of.
Easy ones for Life would be Squire -> Knight and Ballista -> Catapult. Could also do Squire -> Crusader and Pikeman -> Knight.
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NimoStar
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Modding the Unmoddable
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posted March 11, 2022 09:59 PM |
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Magi to Evil Sorceress is too big a leap, I would use either Genies or Ogre Magi.
Pikeman could upgrade to Crusader, not Knight.
Upgrading level 2 to level 4 will always be insanely unbalanced. Generally "upgrades" should happen within just a single level distance.
Anyways this are my thoughts.
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iliveinabox05
Honorable
Famous Hero
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posted March 11, 2022 11:09 PM |
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NimoStar said:
Magi to Evil Sorceress is too big a leap, I would use either Genies or Ogre Magi.
Pikeman could upgrade to Crusader, not Knight.
Upgrading level 2 to level 4 will always be insanely unbalanced. Generally "upgrades" should happen within just a single level distance.
Anyways this are my thoughts.
To be clear, the only upgrades actually going on here are the Magi to Evil Sorceresses. The others talked about are just discussion about what might make sense as upgrades in general, maybe for a Hillfort or something 
While Evil Sorceresses are significantly stronger, they fit the bill as a replacement for Enchanters. Enchanters aren't recruitable in your towns, only via dwellings, and Tarnum (Dracon) can upgrade Magi / Monks into them. They're also level 6, so I would say close enough that they could map to a level 4 creature in H4.
The upgrade cost is where the balancing will come into play. Higher difficulty will be a higher cost. I'm also considering putting a limit on how many can be upgraded per map, but we'll see.
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NimoStar
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Modding the Unmoddable
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posted March 11, 2022 11:21 PM |
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Edited by NimoStar at 23:26, 11 Mar 2022.
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The gap between lavel 6 and 7 is enormous, arguably much larger than any other gap in H3, and H4 keeps that distinction.
Level 2 creatures in H4 are generally like lvl3 in H3 (see: elves) H4 magi only have 15 hp while H3 ones have 25/30
So, you are upgrading a lower tier into a higher tier. This is very much a massive balance change-.
In H3 terms you are going from
Level 4 -> Level 6
To
Level 3 -> Level 7
Enchanter also has only 30 hp, while Evil Sorceress has 100; over 300% the value,
I would say the upgrade should be limited to X per week if you want to keep that "equivalency". Even two magi per week is equivalent to a full Sorceress dwelling for free, which is a lot.
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pyroxene
Tavern Dweller
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posted March 22, 2022 10:56 AM |
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Yea while it would certainly be fun, being able to upgrade Magi to Evil Sorceresses will likely cause balance issues for the MOTE campaign. You wouldn't bother spending gold on building stuff in your towns and just steamroll anyone and everyone with Mass Slow + Implosions.
Unless you give dumb down the stats of Evil Sorceresses. Maybe give them 35 hp and replace Implosion with Fire Bolt? Alternatively as suggested by Nimo, make Magi upgrade to Genies instead (though that seems weird from an artistic direction perspective...)
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iliveinabox05
Honorable
Famous Hero
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posted March 22, 2022 08:25 PM |
bonus applied by Galaad on 24 Mar 2022. |
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Update.
On a general H4 Restoration of Axeoth project level note, there are some extremely cool things on the horizon, which may prompt us to focus on getting Every Dog Has His Day released. I hope to have more on that in the near future 
H4 Chronicles
I finished my play through of Conquest of the Underworld not too long ago, and finished making updates based on that play through.
Some of the more important updates to Conquest of the Underworld:
- The final map ended up not being finishable as the way to Deezelisk was blocked right after the quest guard to reach him.
- Put Deezelisk on his own team so enemy AI heroes could not retreat to his town.
- Map7, one of the underground enemy towns was unreachable due to some rocks blocking the way
- The player does not have an AI ally on any map, as it didn't make sense and in all cases there was something to contradict the player having a demon ally, whether object placements on the map or directly in the text.
- Many passability fixes to mirror the passability in the H3 version throughout the campaign.
Masters of the Elements
- Magi can be upgraded to Evil Sorceresses for a price, either at a quest hut next to the player's main town, or once per week if the player has the funds and Tarnum has Magi in his army.
See after my update for more discussion on this.
- Brought the stat structures back in for things like the Star Axis and Garden of Knowledge.
- In Map 5 (Plane of Fire), I was using placed events to directly change a dwelling to be the player's or AI's color depending on who stepped next to the dwelling in order to determine when the player owned all dwellings.
I figured out the proper way to do this without directly changing the owner of the dwellings, so now the win condition behaves exactly as it does in H3.
- Added in missing Eyes for Huts of the Magi in map 6
- Fixed some text typos or grammatical issues, which came from the H3 version.
General campaign updates
- After Map 3 or so for each campaign, Tarnum and any carryover hero will receive Boots of Travel to account for Logistics in H3. I've found that the boots are a great fit for this purpose and enable me to make almost the exact same progress with exploration as Logistics does in H3.
- Fixed the issue of not being able to add a custom message directly to an artifact, as well as attaching a battle to an artifact.
I was using placed events around the artifact for the custom message, but then when you actually pick up the artifact, you still get the default message.
As far as attaching a battle to the artifact, I've found the best thing to do here is have an actual stack guarding the artifact and add the message scripting, etc. to the stack.
- Buff AI morale since they often have creatures from different alignments. Added this in the AI enhancing scripts as part of the placed events for increasing AI experience.
I'm sure I missed some, but those are the big ones I can remember!
pyroxene said:
Yea while it would certainly be fun, being able to upgrade Magi to Evil Sorceresses will likely cause balance issues for the MOTE campaign. You wouldn't bother spending gold on building stuff in your towns and just steamroll anyone and everyone with Mass Slow + Implosions.
Unless you give dumb down the stats of Evil Sorceresses. Maybe give them 35 hp and replace Implosion with Fire Bolt? Alternatively as suggested by Nimo, make Magi upgrade to Genies instead (though that seems weird from an artistic direction perspective...)
It really depends on the difficulty you choose. Here are the values that we've settled on so far and have tested on intermediate difficulty:
These values are for each Magi upgraded.
Easy / Intermediate: 4000 Gold, 2 Mercury, 2 Gems
Advanced: 6000 Gold, 3 Mercury, 3 Gems
Expert: 8000 Gold, 4 Mercury, 4 Gems
Champion: 10000 Gold, 5 Mercury, 5 Gems
As you can see, if you play on higher difficulties, not only will you not be building things in your town, but you won't be upgrading many Evil Sorceresses either if that's all you plan to do. If you think you're just going to sit there hitting end turn, the AI is still playing and taking very few losses along the way.
With the enhanced AI scripting, you're likely to get steamrolled on intermediate without the ability to upgrade your Magi to Evil Sorceresses, as one tester found out for us.
Unfortunately there really just isn't any other choice for an upgrade to try mirroring the H3 version, for the reasons I've already mentioned, and this can pretty easily be balanced out by simply tweaking the costs.
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NimoStar
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Modding the Unmoddable
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posted March 23, 2022 03:59 AM |
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Edited by NimoStar at 04:04, 23 Mar 2022.
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Quote:
With the enhanced AI scripting, you're likely to get steamrolled on intermediate without the ability to upgrade your Magi to Evil Sorceresses, as one tester found out for us.
Besides all the other problems already mentioned, it seems bad to rely on this one gimmick to make the campaign playable.
If you get steamrolled in normal difficulty without the gimmick, it means that in higher difficulties when access to the gimmick is limited or nil, and the AI is even stronger, the campaign will be unplayable.
After all, your effective AI scripting removes the handicap that AI had in fighting neutral stacks buffed by higher difficulties.
Not only that but the neutral stacks didn't get upgraded either meaning that they will be insignificant for the often level 25+ starting heroes.
As an additional concern, in H3 the true limiting resource was your number of magi/monk and the upgrade cost was not really high all things considered. In this case since Evil Sorceress are so strong and the cost so high the mechanic is seriously biased for economics. Nothing will matter more than just getting resources if the conversion is effectively unlimited by other factors.-
I don't really see the advantage over just choosing genies. It's a sex change either way  . The importance of ES being "neutrals" is overstated over balance and play design, since them being max lvl creatures is a much more overbearing factor in comparison.
* * *
Dare I suggest another solution?
Turn four Magi into each single Evil Sorceress and/or Two Monks into an Evil Sorceress, plus a much more moderate fee.
No scaling with difficulty, that already has mechanics of its own to make things harder.
* * *
If not, oh well, more work modding...
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iliveinabox05
Honorable
Famous Hero
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posted March 23, 2022 06:27 PM |
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You certainly have the right to your own opinion.
We also have the right to use our own ideas and opinions on how best to balance our campaigns. There is a fine line between balance and fun, and sometimes it's tough to achieve both.
Currently the fun level has been greatly increased with this mechanic ported from H3.
Also keep in mind that in H3, this same mechanic wasn't very well balanced either.
Edit. My previous post was a bit ambiguous, but all of the issues I mentioned there have been fixed and the links are all updated with the new campaign files.
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Bytebandit
Promising
Famous Hero
Soul Merchant
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posted March 24, 2022 03:46 AM |
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The H3 versions are too easy to play. They are story campaigns after all. The balance between story campaigns and viable campaigns inches closer.
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iliveinabox05
Honorable
Famous Hero
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posted April 11, 2022 07:25 PM |
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Just a quick update: work still continues on H4 Chronicles. Right now both The World Tree and The Fiery Moon have been put together and are ready for testing.
Currently I've been spending a LOT of time with The World Tree working on balance issues with the AI. I'm working to figure out the best amount of resources to give the AI since they have continually been smoking me like a cheap cigar.
I've gotten all the way down to not even giving the AI extra gold each turn (tried giving them as little as 1k per turn to simulate an extra gold mine). There are just additional things I need to start learning to account for, such as number of towns the AI controls vs. what the player controls, etc.
I might even need to give the AI less non-gold resources, but we'll see.
Anywhoo, I'll try to have The World Tree out the door soon at least!
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iliveinabox05
Honorable
Famous Hero
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posted May 14, 2022 05:14 AM |
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Took me longer than I intended, but The World Tree is now available for download in the original post!
Still figuring out optimal settings for AI enhancement, so some of these maps are a bit more difficult.
I will likely make The Fiery Moon available for download without doing a play through myself, as my time is currently very limited, so feedback there will be appreciated
Edit. Added The Fiery Moon as well to the original post.
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NimoStar
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Modding the Unmoddable
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posted May 15, 2022 02:38 AM |
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Quote:
I've gotten all the way down to not even giving the AI extra gold each turn (tried giving them as little as 1k per turn to simulate an extra gold mine)
Come to the immersive side and just put in the ai controlled goldmines. Its faster :v
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iliveinabox05
Honorable
Famous Hero
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posted July 03, 2022 05:20 PM |
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With H4Zer0's amazing work to add completely new creatures, we thought it might be a good time to show off some other amazing work that's been done, as well as give some hints of what's to come.
Take a look here. Keep in mind, these models are still subject to change. And there are several more of these as well
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baronus
Legendary Hero
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posted July 03, 2022 07:42 PM |
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Loooooool!!!!
It looks absolutly completly fantastic! Better than original! We want more!
Looks like Heroes V by NWC!
Do you have more this style units? It may be first step to restoration Heroes V by NWC!
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iliveinabox05
Honorable
Famous Hero
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posted July 03, 2022 07:54 PM |
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baronus said:
Loooooool!!!!
It looks absolutly completly fantastic! Better than original! We want more!
Looks like Heroes V by NWC!
Do you have more this style units? It may be first step to restoration Heroes V by NWC!
We do have more, this was just a long overdue teaser
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baronus
Legendary Hero
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posted July 03, 2022 07:59 PM |
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Edited by baronus at 20:02, 03 Jul 2022.
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baronus
Wonderfull! These high quality units are really great explosion! I never thought it will be possible!
We need violet peasant violet monk violet pikeman violet chavalieur! If its this color good recoloring will made fit!
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NimoStar
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Modding the Unmoddable
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posted July 04, 2022 05:29 AM |
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Good job and interesting, howeverm I hope that you notice that these are much too dark compared with the original models and evn the ground they stand in
Thus all original models would have to be replaced (including ground), or the renders be made with lighter settings.
On the other hand I don't know why this would be new creatures, seems replacements for existing ones :V unless two of each...
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baronus
Legendary Hero
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posted July 04, 2022 06:51 AM |
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Yes these are Life faction but very good because looks like HV! Very good contrast! Orignals are rather blurry! I suggest keep these colors! We can replace egsisting models too. May be HV mod as an option.
Especially nature replacment can be master piece!
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assryn
Adventuring Hero
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posted July 04, 2022 09:11 AM |
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Edited by assryn at 09:12, 04 Jul 2022.
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baronus said:
Yes these are Life faction but very good because looks like HV! Very good contrast! Orignals are rather blurry! I suggest keep these colors! We can replace egsisting models too. May be HV mod as an option.
Especially nature replacment can be master piece!
No worries Baronus, there's plans for Heroes V's original version 
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baronus
Legendary Hero
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posted July 04, 2022 04:03 PM |
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If you have team to HVNWC reactivation Im very interested!
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