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| Thread: H4 Duel Map Generator | |
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iliveinabox05
Honorable
Famous Hero
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posted October 04, 2023 04:13 PM |
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H4 Duel Map Generator
This thread will be to discuss the Duel Map Generator feature that is part of the H4 Advanced Options Map Editor. Air any thoughts, ideas, feedback for both the generator and the maps that are generated here. Balancing will definitely be needed for these duel maps, as well as ideas for bonuses or anything else to make them even more interesting and fun!
I'll add what we have so far for default settings and thoughts and ideas on bonuses for non-combat skills in the next post.
- An example of a generated duel map to try out here
Duel Maps
Summary: The duel map generator generates an H5 style duel map, which is basically a hero vs. hero battle. You start with a set amount of resources (based on chosen difficulty) and creature growth (6 weeks by default but can be changed), visit a level up structure to level up your hero (unless you generated the duel map to auto-level the hero), purchase artifacts, skills, stat increases, spells, and/or creatures before heading off to battle.
Unlike most duel maps, you can fight more than once! Best of 5? Best of 7? Sure! Just set the number of battle wins to be declared the map winner when generating the duel map (or update it later in the generated map!).
Each successive round will see an increase in your creature amounts, so each successive battle will grow in scale. Your resources are reset each round, but currently do not carry over to successive rounds. You keep your artifacts from round to round, so plan ahead!
Features:
- Multiple battle rounds to win the duel. The defeated hero is returned to town to be freed from prison the following turn
- Starting resources depend on chosen difficulty. Less money for higher difficulties to make your choices of what to purchase matter more
- Increased movement so everything can be done in a single turn
- Quest shops to purchase battle items and skills. All artifact quest shop items are limited to a single quantity, with only multiples of potions available (5 total per potion type)
Configurable settings during generation:
- Starting hero level (can be manual level up or automatic)
- Number of battles won to be declared the winner
- Available artifacts, skills, spells, stat increases
- Terrain type for the map
Configurable settings after generation (in configurable settings map timed event):
- Starting hero level
- Number of battles to win
- Starting weekly growth
- Amount increase for weekly growth in successive battles
- Starting resource amounts per difficulty level
Known issues:
- There is an issue that causes the game to slow down when you have an event with a really high number of scripts. It seems events take longer to find, but when they are run they still seem to take the usual amount of time to run. The events causing this are the ones to remove and give back artifacts.
We should be able to alleviate the issue by having fewer artifacts available for purchase to cut down on the number of scripts needed, but I’m not sure which would be best removed and which should definitely be present, so feedback is needed.
There are also a lot of artifacts, so going through to select the ones that you want takes some time as well.
- For the defeated player, it is a little odd getting started in the next round. You enter your town, click the prison to free your hero, exit the town, and reenter the town for your hero to be visible. Not anything that I can think of to do here, and having it this way makes the scripting easier anyway.
- Currently there aren’t any bonuses being applied for non-battle skills like Nobility and Scouting, but I plan to add them.
- Customizing resources per round not yet implemented on the duel map generation panel.
- Prevent army splitting stacks can be dismissed. I plan to add scripting to ensure those stacks remain on the map and will result in a loss if they are removed.
- Need to add more magical artifacts. Currently we have weapons, armor, shields, helms, rings, and potions.
- Can’t yet play vs. an AI opponent
- Water and lava river terrain types will result in an unplayable map. Water I plan to implement, but can’t do anything with lava river so I’ll need to not include that option
- No readme at the moment
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iliveinabox05
Honorable
Famous Hero
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posted October 04, 2023 04:28 PM |
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Ideas for bonuses for non-combat skills that have been discussed so far (currently all 3rd secondary skills are banned)
- Nobility: Bonus creatures each round based on level of mastery. Maybe the higher the mastery, the higher creature levels it applies to? At GM does it give a bonus addition for all creature levels?
- Estates: Bonus gold based on level of mastery. Basic +1000, Advanced +2000, Expert +3000, Master +4000, GM +5000
- Mining: Bonus resources based on mastery (also could have some things that cost only resources to make this more useful). Basic +5 Wood/Ore +2 others, Advanced +8 Wood/Ore +4 others, Expert +11 Wood/Ore +6 others, Master +14 Wood/Ore +8 others, GM +17 Wood/Ore +10 others.
- Scouting: Get to see what alignment your enemy is for the first battle (mostly useful if they chose random). Access to another quest hut that gives artifacts based on level of mastery?
- Pathfinding: Convert lower level units to "faster" units?
- Seamanship: Convert lower level units into something like Pirates, Mermaids, or Sea monsters (based on mastery)?
- *Stealth: Maybe more gold, stolen from other enemy player???
*Stealth included because chaos can start with the skill, so it will still be offered on level up.
Additional thoughts and ideas
- On initial level-up, should we maybe give a free random spell on increase of a primary magic skill? There are benefits given directly to the hero for other primary skills, so it might be nice to give something when advancing a primary magic skill, instead of only being able to make use of it by purchasing spells.
- Some type of reward for winning a round?
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Albyx
Known Hero
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posted October 12, 2023 01:53 PM |
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Ideas for currently useless skills, some of them may repeat with what's in the first post:
1. Scouting is absolutely useless skill branch because there's no adventure map action in duel maps.
1.1. Scouting: add extra options in shop and creature selection. Another idea is granting vision of what creatures and artifacts can enemy select from.
1.2. Pathfinding: allow selection of next battlefield terrain type (stronger pathfinder wins if both selected different terrain).
1.3. Seamanship: give sea creatures per skill level.
1.4. Stealth: give extra gold and experience. Can also remove or steal some artifacts from enemy shop selection.
2. Nobility skills are also useless, they can be investition into future rounds, the later round is the stronger bonuses are.
2.1. Nobility: increase size of future creature stacks.
2.2. Estates: give more money, or reduce costs in shops.
2.3. Mining: increase limits of purchasable bonuses.
2.4. Diplomacy: maybe stay banned to have more condenced nobility branch.
3. Summoning, Necromancy, Charm and Resurrection: give free extra stacks of faction creatures before combat.
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If changes in skills will be overwhelming you can make mini plugin with changed descriptions so people don't have to remember everything or read big text wall. They have separate mods in H5 for random duels, you can do the same (even change balance if needed).
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iliveinabox05
Honorable
Famous Hero
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posted October 12, 2023 05:45 PM |
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Albyx said:
Ideas for currently useless skills, some of them may repeat with what's in the first post:
1. Scouting is absolutely useless skill branch because there's no adventure map action in duel maps.
1.1. Scouting: add extra options in shop and creature selection. Another idea is granting vision of what creatures and artifacts can enemy select from.
1.2. Pathfinding: allow selection of next battlefield terrain type (stronger pathfinder wins if both selected different terrain).
1.3. Seamanship: give sea creatures per skill level.
1.4. Stealth: give extra gold and experience. Can also remove or steal some artifacts from enemy shop selection.
2. Nobility skills are also useless, they can be investition into future rounds, the later round is the stronger bonuses are.
2.1. Nobility: increase size of future creature stacks.
2.2. Estates: give more money, or reduce costs in shops.
2.3. Mining: increase limits of purchasable bonuses.
2.4. Diplomacy: maybe stay banned to have more condenced nobility branch.
3. Summoning, Necromancy, Charm and Resurrection: give free extra stacks of faction creatures before combat.
Thanks for the ideas! I really like the thought of Stealth stealing from the opposing player. Gives some options for interactions outside of actual battle, and also makes perfect sense for the skill.
Different terrains is also an interesting idea. We'd need some extra teleporters and to have them all behind gates, as well as a mechanism to select which gate to open based on level of Pathfinding. Scripting could get a bit complex here, since after battle each player will level up in different turns for the check to see who has a higher mastery.
Albyx said:
If changes in skills will be overwhelming you can make mini plugin with changed descriptions so people don't have to remember everything or read big text wall. They have separate mods in H5 for random duels, you can do the same (even change balance if needed).
Definitely like this idea. We can start looking at creating the mod files once things like these skill bonuses are more hashed out.
What would be really cool would be to somehow include duel map generation in game 
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Edit. Also we'll need to think about bonuses for the entire Might faction as well, since the spell quest shop was replaced with a random conservatory and a fully constructed mage guild + libraries in town.
Obviously Might won't have access to a fully constructed mage guild, and will be forced to take the magic skill for the conservatory available to them.
One thought is to increase dwelling populations more for Might, so I've currently doubled those populations for the Might player.
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Edit2. The duel map in the original post has been updated to include 2 heroes for each player. I haven't updated the advanced editor download yet, but you can now have 1-7 heroes.
You can also play vs. an AI player now, though it only works for a single round (unless you lose the round) since the AI can't figure out how to release their heroes from prison on the next turn. I also haven't yet added scripts to give the AI various artifacts and spells to help them out.
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Sammyboi123
Hired Hero
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posted October 25, 2023 07:30 AM |
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Looks promising! My suggestion would be, could we just cut the lvl 1s out and give each side 2 more heroes? That would be much more realistic as to what you could expect from a PvP confrontation. In fact you could argue cutting the lvl 2 in favor of 4 heroes would be the most realistic.
But just the 3 heroes with the level 2 would be fine. That’s the typical setup on heroless start maps where you need to buy your first one out of the tavern on day 1 anyways, so it’s not unheard of.
So you would have your 2 faction heroes, then another hero from an ally faction of your choice. In the ballpark of lvl 15-20 given those creature stack sizes. Keep up the good work, looking forward to checking this out.
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iliveinabox05
Honorable
Famous Hero
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posted October 25, 2023 04:15 PM |
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Sammyboi123 said:
Looks promising! My suggestion would be, could we just cut the lvl 1s out and give each side 2 more heroes? That would be much more realistic as to what you could expect from a PvP confrontation. In fact you could argue cutting the lvl 2 in favor of 4 heroes would be the most realistic.
Hey there!
Whoever generates the duel map can now select from 1 to 7 heroes. As more heroes are chosen, the creature stacks are removed (starting with the lower level creatures), so this part at least is done.
Sammyboi123 said:
But just the 3 heroes with the level 2 would be fine. That’s the typical setup on heroless start maps where you need to buy your first one out of the tavern on day 1 anyways, so it’s not unheard of.
So you would have your 2 faction heroes, then another hero from an ally faction of your choice. In the ballpark of lvl 15-20 given those creature stack sizes. Keep up the good work, looking forward to checking this out.
The thing I'm unsure how to do is the hero of another faction part. Currently heroes placed on the map are random heroes that are linked to the faction that the player chooses when starting the map, so we can't even choose if the heroes will be might / magic heroes, just that they are from the same faction.
Maybe a tavern could be used with an empty slot on the army and then in the level up quest hut first the placed heroes are leveled up, and then level up the hired hero using the "weakest hero" target, but it would need a bit of testing and it wouldn't work for an AI player.
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sammyboi123
Hired Hero
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posted October 26, 2023 04:20 AM |
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iliveinabox05 said:
Sammyboi123 said:
Looks promising! My suggestion would be, could we just cut the lvl 1s out and give each side 2 more heroes? That would be much more realistic as to what you could expect from a PvP confrontation. In fact you could argue cutting the lvl 2 in favor of 4 heroes would be the most realistic.
Hey there!
Whoever generates the duel map can now select from 1 to 7 heroes. As more heroes are chosen, the creature stacks are removed (starting with the lower level creatures), so this part at least is done.
Sammyboi123 said:
But just the 3 heroes with the level 2 would be fine. That’s the typical setup on heroless start maps where you need to buy your first one out of the tavern on day 1 anyways, so it’s not unheard of.
So you would have your 2 faction heroes, then another hero from an ally faction of your choice. In the ballpark of lvl 15-20 given those creature stack sizes. Keep up the good work, looking forward to checking this out.
The thing I'm unsure how to do is the hero of another faction part. Currently heroes placed on the map are random heroes that are linked to the faction that the player chooses when starting the map, so we can't even choose if the heroes will be might / magic heroes, just that they are from the same faction.
Maybe a tavern could be used with an empty slot on the army and then in the level up quest hut first the placed heroes are leveled up, and then level up the hired hero using the "weakest hero" target, but it would need a bit of testing and it wouldn't work for an AI player.
I see. Yea its the last step to take to getting to simulating a real PvP, because of course players are going to team up with the heroes of an ally faction, in order to diversify their skills both might and magic.
In fact.. Could you just start each player with 9 heroes? and edit their starting skills to mimic the 9 starting classes? (minus barbarian).
They can all be from the same faction, but you are getting the same effect. If I was life for example, I would get a priest who had order magic, to simulate teaming up with order and the mage in a real game.
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iliveinabox05
Honorable
Famous Hero
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posted October 26, 2023 05:39 PM |
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sammyboi123 said:
I see. Yea its the last step to take to getting to simulating a real PvP, because of course players are going to team up with the heroes of an ally faction, in order to diversify their skills both might and magic.
In fact.. Could you just start each player with 9 heroes? and edit their starting skills to mimic the 9 starting classes? (minus barbarian).
They can all be from the same faction, but you are getting the same effect. If I was life for example, I would get a priest who had order magic, to simulate teaming up with order and the mage in a real game.
Hmm, it wouldn't work with random heroes since you can't edit their skills, but I do have plans to update the generator so that you can create custom armies for players.
So in that case you could set whatever heroes and creatures you wanted, though you would be limited to 7 army slots. You only get 1 army, and can't split since there are 7 other blocked off armies preventing you from doing so.
But this custom army mode could allow you to select your main faction for your town and any creatures (if less than 7 heroes are used).
Edit. Also to mention it here, duel map generation, as well as converting H3 maps to H4, will be available as an option in game (posted in the Heroes 4 Restoration of Axeoth thread here).
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