Waterfall_13
Tested version v12.12.24
What's interesting:
During installation, I did everything as described in the file, but something went wrong (it crashed immediately after the logo appeared).
How I solved it: I duplicated the game folder, downloaded the mod, extracted it, copied everything, replacing the existing files, and it started working.
Immediately after starting, I noticed a bug: the menu icons and the actual buttons didn't match.
How I solved it: I switched to windowed mode using Alt + Enter, stretched the window, and, by trial and error (hovering the mouse reveals a tooltip), found the settings menu, and set everything to default. This resulted in a resolution of 1920x1080 and video quality of "High". I emphasize this because if you set a different video quality, the icon resolution changes, they shift, and the menu is again out of place.
Now, about the gameplay:
I played as the mages and looked at the skill tree. The ideas are simply brilliant; it feels like I downloaded HoMM3:WoG 10 years ago and am just starting to figure it out. It's cool, I like it. The downside is that some of the center perks require a lot of things, and even if you start developing them from the beginning of the game (I wanted to take Ore's spell resistance, I chose her because she had a higher chance, but in the end, I was short 4 levels, and the map ended). On the other hand, considering the skills I managed to test, the center perks are something amazing; you basically become invincible. That's also cool.
There are some questions about the buildings for the mages. The Mage Guild consistently costs 5 wood, 5 ore, and 2000 gold from level 1 to 5; is this a bug or a feature?
Upgrading to Titans and Storm Titans costs 10 units of all resources, but upgrading to Arch Titans costs much less, as if it should be the other way around, but the costs for other factions are adequate. The cost of level 8 creatures is also not entirely clear; 7 units of a rare resource and 10,000 gold per unit seems extremely expensive. Considering that they are only twice as strong as level 7 creatures (in my opinion, I would reconsider the cost, but if you have a special calculator, I won't interfere; the calculator is sacred).
I was very pleased with the magic button with drop-down menus, where you can see everything: artifacts, heroes, castles, creatures, etc. For people who just want to mess around with the heroes in the evening, it's perfect.
My overall impressions of the mod are positive; I will continue to explore and experiment; I saw many different interesting features, and it's definitely cool.
I'm very glad that you checked out my mod. The fact that it gave you the feeling that it's like WoG also pleasantly surprised me, considering the third-level upgrades; the mod has indeed moved towards the WoG concept. But I can't call the mod WoG because there are no "commanders" and squires =)
The problem with the interface is that when I started doing this, I had the idea to create a menu similar to Heroes 3 (where skill icons were used), but I didn't know anything about how to do it. And since I was playing in 1920x1080 format, I made changes based on that. I did this by trial and error; as a result, the buttons are transparent, and their appearance is the background. Therefore, I adjusted them blindly by repeatedly restarting the game and checking if the button was in the right place for the picture =)
The new center perks are very powerful, and developing them doesn't really spoil the build with useless skills because I enhanced many of the weak skills with bonuses from cities or something similar, so it's difficult to get to the center perks. Essentially, the purpose of the center perks is to entertain the player, but in PvE mode against AI, and in multiplayer, the ability to reach a center perk should be very rare so as not to spoil multiplayer matches.
Regarding the Mage Guild for the mages, this is my idea that racial special buildings should be "more accessible," and the mages' racial ability is "resources in exchange for stats/minions," so it's easier for mages to upgrade the guild without spending valuable resources that can be spent on minions. But this doesn't mean that mages get a discount; it just means that these resources are "transferred" to other buildings, for example, upgrading cats and titans has become more expensive by an equivalent amount.
The fact that upgrading to Arch Titans is cheaper than upgrading the building to Titans is a bug (thank you for pointing it out). It's related to the fact that Arch Titans were added earlier when the building upgrade to Titans was cheaper. I will fix this in the future.
The higher-level creatures (Tier 8) are designed so that they are uber units that can greatly influence the battle, and they are difficult to control. First of all, they cannot be controlled/berserked, killed by a hero with one or two hits (the cleaving sword doesn't work), etc. Therefore, the price is appropriate. Previously, they cost 14000, but I nerfed the attack and defense stats from x2 to x1.5, so they became cheaper.
In general, the entire concept of level 3 creatures that I designed has the main goal: to further enhance the strengths of the creature or compensate for its weaknesses. Of course, such an overpowered unit needs to be balanced, and my two tools are price and hit points (they should be expensive to buy so that you can't buy everything, and they should die comfortably enough so that they can be countered with chaos or a focus-firing unit). So far, this balance is quite well maintained, and if something is out of balance, we see it when playing RMG maps, and we make adjustments.
Yes, the information windows are one of the most important things in my opinion. The ability to clearly see the new features or differences from the original is something that many mods in different games often lack.
Hottabych was responsible for the technical development of the information windows, and I filled in the visual part (I'm not very happy with it, but it's like that for now).
Thank you for writing such a detailed review; it's really important to me 😁
