RTF is a global modification that replaces all towns in the game.

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You might not agree with me, but still...

I had this thought... We played Heroes 5 first without the second tier upgrade for monsters... and then, when it was introduced, it became several times more interesting! Because the choice of creatures is huge, it's great... But... it's clear that in terms of abilities, the upgraded and advanced versions can differ greatly... but visually and, let's say, in essence - they are essentially the same.
Let's take, for example, the Colossus, then the Titan, and the Thunder Elemental... look at them - the color is different, the abilities are slightly different... but it's still the same thing, just a donut without filling or with filling... (I came up with this comparison late at night, lol)
Dark Elf Witches - they are generally difficult to distinguish, the color is different, but in essence - it's a woman with a whip, that's all.
They don't differ much in essence, but visually - the Dwarf Bears, that's where I always had a difficult choice, the Northern Bears are more beautiful, but the others seem stronger... Wizard Mages differ, but again, the upgraded and advanced versions, the Mage and the Archmage are essentially different only in the color of their robes.
I've always felt sorry for the Rakshasa unit... because essentially, a Rakshasa is a woman, and it looks unusual, cool... but you can't really play with them, because you build an upgrade for the building and get blue or yellow lions... already men.

So, that's what I wanted to say... I would make a mod that does something like in Heroes 4 - we essentially have 3 tiers for each creature, base, upgraded, and advanced. In the vanilla game, the game recognizes creatures as base, upgraded, and advanced... but the player doesn't care about that. If, for example, we make the base level 4 Academy of Magic, for example, a Mage, the upgraded version a Djinn, and the advanced version a Rakshasa, then we get three completely DIFFERENT creatures at one level... and it will be more diverse and enjoyable for the player, which one to take - a Mage or a Djinn, some will like the visual appearance, some will choose based on characteristics, and some will recruit both, but for different heroes.
Then, continuing the example, we can replace the "Cerberus and Hellhound" for Inferno - which are essentially a dog with three heads, only one is red, the second is smoking, with a Cerberus, a conditional Ifrit, and a conditional something else... and they will differ in abilities and visually, and in essence... the only thing that will unite them is belonging to the level of creatures, 1 or, conversely, 7.

There was an idea within the framework of the City of Elementals - that the Water Snake would be upgraded to an Ice Fox, but someone told me that Heroes players wouldn't understand it.

Now I won't do something like that because of the way it works - I spend several days preparing the textures (breaking them down into fabric, metal, leather, chainmail...), and then I paint 3 units based on this. If the units are different, then each creature will have its own preparation stage - this is 3 times more routine.

Sometimes, of course, I get carried away - I spent a week making 3 Dwarf Warriors, and then I came up with a Berserker and had to work for another week to prepare and glue the parts of the body, armor, weapons... but this was due to the concept - I made a Berserker because it's cool, inspiration struck, later I will also make a mutant with a meat beard under inspiration.

There is also a downside - I make some units without soul, just to fill a slot, all the Dwarf Mages are made this way - the textures used are the same as for the infantry and archers (leather jackets, scales, fabric, chainmail), and the armor models are taken from the remaining unused concepts, for example, the Guard of Dawn helmet from the unrealized Dwarf Warrior, a helmet with horns from an old concept of a Mage... by the end of the work, the unit even started to please me, so it will not be destroyed and forgotten in the future, as was the case with the green Knight of the Cultists, I was browsing the album a month ago and was very surprised when I saw it - I completely forgot about it.

I have created my own working principle - I come up with concepts for the upgrade and alt-upgrade as a whole, so that it is more pleasant to work on each unit.

For example, Chaos Dwarfs - this is a black upgrade - conservatives, the old elite ruling powerful cities, their units are well equipped, and the alt-upgrade is a new elite that formed recently - after the war in another region, due to supply problems, the Dwarfs had to look for new methods of warfare, half-naked Berserkers appeared (as a result of saving on armor), unstable, possessed mutants appeared, and a new type of firearm with reduced damage, but increased initiative (the mechanism of the gun was simplified).

For the Cultists, the faction is divided into clerics, who put more emphasis on magic, and materialists in heavy armor.

And for the Light Dwarfs, there is a folk upgrade and a noble one, one of their features is that black steel with gold can only be worn by the alt-upgrade, because this is a privilege of noble families with powerful rune smiths, and the simple upgrade wears Landsknecht hats - just to stand out, the hat is a symbol of belonging to a trading guild, which makes money on long-distance trade.

And the undead, it's simple here - blood upgrade and plague upgrade.

The concepts change with the appearance of new units, for example, at first, all the orange units of the Chaos Dwarfs were planned to be wild like Berserkers - in skins and trophies, but everything changed and the Berserker remained the only one like that.

Within the race, uniform upgrades and alt-upgrades allow you to think through the internal structure of the faction and better understand it, these can be warring parties or, conversely, friends from different regions of the world, like Orc Pirates and Mountain Orcs - they do not fight, they just work in different biomes

Added 7 minutes ago

I have one concept that both fits the general idea and stands out from it - the Magic Skull.

The Magic Skull floats in the air and shoots magic arrows (there was such a unit in D&D).

Upgrade - a monster made of slime, made on the basis of water elementals from the seventh level, there is also a magic skull inside.

Alt-upgrade - a fifth-level earth elemental, but instead of a head, it has a magic skull.

Three different models, but one unit