MMH5.5 - Heroes of Might and Magic 5.5

2dredknight

Also imagine the skill tree the other way around: There are 12 skills divided in 4 groups where chance to get skill from that group is 18%-10%-5%-2%. Every game that you play with that hero you will always get the first 6 skills as they are favored by 80% chance.
Wouldn't that remove the human decision from the hero build?

2% skill: up to level 21, the general chance to catch the skill is about 45% (0.65/0.67 ^ 20 = 0.55; 0.67 means that on average we have several skills filled with a total weight of 33%, i.e., 2% is chosen from the remaining 67%)
3% skill: about 60%
4% skill: about 71%
5% skill: about 79%
6% skill: about 85%
8% skill: about 92%
10% skill: about 96%
11% skill: about 97%
12% skill: about 98%
16% skill: about 100%
18% skill: about 100%

That is, starting from 5%, the chance to catch the desired skill is fundamentally high enough (over 80%), but still, with a significant difference in chances, there will be a noticeable difference in how quickly a skill is caught (at early levels).

- Starting primary points and %stats should be devided between spellpower and knowledge mostly and you cant have hero starting with 0 knowledge (unlike Might classes where heroes can start with 0 attack or defense).
- The pool of secondary skills is smaller for them as they do not have shatters or specialized might skills (war machines, combat).

1) All specified classes have about 45% spellpower and about 30% knowledge; it would be possible at the parameter level to give less spellpower (30%) but more knowledge (45%) in some cases
2) If wizardry is mandatory for all magic classes, then education is not (it could be moved to rare skills in some places); also, the summoning+chaos combination could be broken up by other schools of magic to reduce repetition

3) Question: Shatter skills for heroes of non-stronghold races is blasphemy.

It's not so much blasphemy as the fact that these skills are very specific/situational; it's difficult to make them attractive enough at the level of regular skills.

Magic damage/effects cannot be countered.

This is not true:
- there is magic resistance (15% chance to reflect a negative spell);
- there is reflection (15% reduction of magic damage);
- there are health bonuses (+X% to health)
- there are specialized items such as: seal of light, seal of darkness, weakness of darkness, elemental balance, banishment

If there is a problem with early adepts of Destructive and Summoning schools, it can be tried to solve differently: significantly raise the prices of top-tier spells of levels 3-5, so that they are oriented toward the late game (and require a lot of knowledge). Low-level spells deal less damage.

Fire arrows in Offense because there is no way how to put it in War machines and still be useful with tripple balista (which everyone likes).

What is not good here is that this ability actually requires upgrading war machines, otherwise it performs many times weaker. And on the other hand, when upgrading the ballista, it is very important to upgrade attack with archery/fire arrows, as the damage is multiplied. That is, it creates too tight a link between attack and war machines (ballista). However, it was like this in the original, so this is just a personal opinion.

Offensive formation - the maximum bonus that dwarves can get of this skill is +6 and when the difference between stack sizes and tiers is great. As this skill is not working on other races we decided to give 50% of that to the other heroes.
If you calculate the difference it is near the same as the biggest difference is +6 but not for all the units and not all the time. Some of them may have 0 so the discrepancy is neglectable.

+6 is the theoretical maximum (previously the maximum was higher, +10). Real bonuses will be around +1-2 on average. This is an unattractive skill; information has been verified and proven in practice (there is a special Random Tactical Arena format where players compete in builds, and no one wanted to level this skill because it performed poorly).

Magic reduction branch - The second skill is "luck of the barbarian".

Did you test this skill? In the original game, it worked only for orcs and did not protect any other creatures from magic.

Offense gives 20% damage. +3 luck is calculated to give roughly +20% damage to the whole army.

Luck is stronger, because expert Offence+Archery gives 20% damage (4 abilities), while expert Luck gives the same 20% for only 3 abilities.

Critical strike increase luck damage by 10% which increase the damage boost from 20% to 35%. You have 1 perk that gives the bonus of Advanced Luck.

With +3 luck - 20% to 30% (not 35%). With +2 luck (advanced) - 13% to 20%. The passing point is situational soldier's luck, which is not needed by everyone.

Retribution in leadership will be way too powerful because it will overshadow the other perk choices. this skill path will give 25% bonus damage on its own without counting the morale effect!!!

You weakened retribution from 5% to 2.5%; you could weaken it even further — to 2%, then the bonus will be between 4 and 10% (from +2 to +5 morale).

Lorewise, "Aura of speed" fits nice into Leadership. The hero inspires the army so much that the troops make an extra mile to be worthy. Leadership is all about inspiration

If it stays in leadership, there is an interesting idea to give +1 to initiative instead of speed. In any case, this is a "final" perk, i.e., ultimately strong (both with +1 speed and +1 initiative). Although you wanted to avoid "final" perks.
The downside of giving +1 speed is that it very strongly buffs rush tactics. Reach and kill on the first turn. +1 initiative strengthens the army overall well, but is not as useful for rushing as +1 speed. Finally, initiative is what the Leadership skill works with (triggered morale increases turn frequency, just like initiative).

Check the spell book and mana costs ask yourself what mana pool the hero needs to endure the whole battle. I have had fights where hero with 200 mana losses the battle due to being out of it.
Knowledge is just as important as spellpower. This is why there are a lot of knowledge perks here and there. If you want mana, you go and get them.

I know that Random Tactical Arena players in 100% of cases take wizardry at 10/20/30% in magic builds. That is, it is a mandatory skill that does not need strengthening. Even though mana may be insufficient (100-200), the skill still performs magnificently.

Added after 50 minutes

Combat - except the retaliation bonus that was part of the skill before this is completely new tree as a look and feel to the player. The idea of this tree is the make the Hero useful in combat as he was the 8th unit.

This skill is very, very weak. Its bonuses are effectively the same as those of Offence, but it triggers 4 times less often (since only 25% of melee damage comes from retaliation strikes).
Giving an additional +1/2/3 to defense would make it okay.
Alternatively, there is another option: before each battle, additionally grant +3/6/9 to the hero's level (numbers for example) for the duration of the fight (WarpHeroExp script). This will affect: damage from hero attack; specializations; the power of certain level-dependent spells, including calls. It will not affect the hero's parameters (even under education) or their abilities.

- Armor spikes - true this was made to fill in a gap. FYI each perk price is about 2 primary stat skills. Wherever a perk feels stronger it has a weaker one along thew way. If we find something better it will be changed.

+1/+1 to attack and defense is noticeably weaker than +2 to attack or +2 to defense.
A bonus distributed among several parameters is weaker than a bonus focused on one parameter, even if they are parameters of the same group (like attack and defense, spellpower and knowledge).
For example, if we have a warrior against a mage, a defense bonus isn't particularly needed. And if it's a mage against a warrior, an attack bonus isn't particularly needed.

Even with that penalty it was still strong so this is why it has -2 attack nerf.

Did you use readiness quite often? Are you satisfied with how it works in practice? In the original game, it was taken very rarely and without penalties (although there was an inconvenient tactics requirement there).

If you go as high as there you either can get distract or some mana recovery perks, we have to keep the choice fair.

In fact, distraction works effectively only against the enemy hero, but doesn't work much against neutrals. Moreover, if there is no wizardry or mass spells (0.1), it doesn't work at all. If there are mass spells (0.1), it works as 10%. If there is wizardry, then 12-15%. By the way, what motivates the pushback after mass spells to be 0.1 rather than 0?
Update: I remembered that distraction pushes the hero below 0, but only until the next unit's turn occurs (at that moment, the negative position on the scale is reset). So a 5-10% pushback happens anyway, even without wizardry / mass spells.

Now gated units will act after 1.25 turns after gating compared to 2 turns beforehand.

1.25 - with the upgraded basic skill, without perks? Ok, I misread the numbers (I was thinking of 1.75).
Fine, then what about the maximum percentage, why not just make it 25% at all skill levels instead of 15/20/25%? After all, expanding gating from tiers 1-2 to 1-4 and 1-6 is already a sufficient buff to the skill; 5% bonuses seem misplaced here. Especially since a 5% bonus is given by the gate master, who in the current implementation looks much weaker than simply leveling the basic skill.

But as knowledge is a little less in power there is a bonus of level up to it.

This is a design error. If you are extending the game to long durations (3 months or more), you must ensure that knowledge is as full-fledged a parameter as it is during normal durations (1-2 months). This is done by increasing the prices of top spells and/or increasing the rate of mana regeneration (which depends on knowledge).

I believe you have a good eye for graphics and I am sorry it does not feel right.

No, I don't really understand graphics — therefore, if some portraits repel even me, they might repel many other players.
All I wanted to say is to add only those heroes whose portraits clearly receive popular approval from 90% of people.
Heroes 4 or 6 have a different visual style, so just taking graphics from there and assuming everything is ok is not the best idea.

Spellbook is too large ? - I am not sure if we have done such change (or at least I dont know of such one). can you point the time in the video so I can take a look?

https://youtu.be/4BqaiXkxPvM?t=2971
https://youtu.be/4BqaiXkxPvM?t=3324

The stealing of artifacts from the map is not possible due to using the 3.0 build and some of the 3.1 LUA commands does not exist.

So the modification is based on 3.0? For what reason? There are problematic things, for example, in 3.0 "fire arrows" ignore 100% of the target's defense (imbalance), and some settings for 3.0 are missing compared to 3.1.

Thanks for the answers! Success in the further development of the modification!