Posts from Clan Wars – new faction mechanics.

Version 1.3 is released.

Detailed description and download links can be found here.

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The mod is installed on top of ToE3.1

Background (optional to read)
I loved the fifth installment of Heroes since its release. I was very attracted by the visual aspect: the design of factions and creatures, city screens.
But when I started studying the game in more detail, I saw that the universe of Heroes 5 is not arranged exactly as intuition suggests:
- Warlocks, contrary to the gloomy design of the race, do not study dark magic
- Demon Lords are not very strong in chaos (due to low spell power)
- Elves cannot use summoning spells, despite a suitable school icon and the fact that Phoenix used to be the most formidable force in the forest castle
- Knights are not so strong in Light Magic
When ToE came out, the second branch of upgrades was an interesting idea. But the fact that both upgrades were available at the same time, while some upgrades were more versatile or simply better than others, and some almost did not differ from each other - all this slightly spoiled the impression. That's when the idea arose to create this mod

What goals were pursued:
- Increase the relevance of racial abilities and faction buildings, add new faction features
- Adjust factions according to their concept and design (in my opinion; details in the background)
- Add a mode in which players have access to only one of the two creature upgrade branches (thereby highlighting two sub-factions with their own gameplay features and increasing the relevance of both upgrade branches, even if one is clearly "better" in most situations)

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What has been done in v1.1 (outdated version)

Dungeon:
- When leveling up the sacrificial pit, the HP sacrificed over several weeks is returned to the player in the form of increased growth of the faction's creatures or in the form of neutral units.
- Darkness is now the native school for warlocks, spell perk drop probabilities have been adjusted.

Inferno:
- Every day, the first sacrifice in the sacrificial pit (any, performed through a special ritual: the hero hides in the city, makes a sacrifice, and then leaves the city) brings the demon lord an additional 666 experience points.
- Demon Lords now rely more on spell power than knowledge - progression has been adjusted.


Sylvan:
- Added racial ability "Night Scouts": at the beginning of the day, a ranger hero discovers neutral armies on the map within a certain radius from himself if he has already fought similar creatures (as part of neutral armies). The ability is activated when building the Ranger Guild, and its effectiveness depends on the Vengeful skill and the presence of the Brotherhood of Rangers. As intended, "Night Scouts" and "Sworn Enemy" should work together to create synergy.
- Summoning is now the native school for rangers, increased the probability of dropping summoning, light, and chaos perks.


Stronghold:
- Added racial mechanic "Slave Labor": if the player has at least one Slave Market, mines guarded by "orcish guards" (weekly growth of orcish creatures level 1-5) bring double income.
- Goblin shamans can now cast a curse once per battle at the basic level - this should somehow increase the value of this upgrade in the early game.


Necropolis:
- ONLY IN SINGLEPLAYER: In battle, the necromancer summons Mummies instead of Elementals and Death Knights instead of Phoenixes.


"War of Clans" mode (requires patching the map with the CWE-MapPatcher utility):
- The player is assigned to one of two clans (you can see your clan in the mission tasks)
- All factions except Orcs have access to only one unit upgrade branch depending on the clan. Also, different clans may have different native schools of magic.
- Both upgrades are available to Orcs, but a racial mechanic appears: "Blood Feud": if the hero has upgrades from another clan, he suffers a penalty to morale (-2) and attack (-2). The penalty can be partially compensated by leveling up racial abilities: "Memory of Our Blood" (attack +2) and "Battle Frenzy" (morale +1).

- If the map assigns the Heaven race to the player, and at the same time the player gets the second clan, then red knights can now be recruited in the tavern.
- If an army of red knights consists only of alt-upgrades of the Heaven castle, it receives +2 attack and -1 defense for every 5 levels, starting from the first.
- A red knight gains +1 morale when learning the "Dark Knight" perk (compensates for squad penalties).

Visual changes:
- Golden Dragon, upgraded succubi, and golden blades of Dancing with Death were taken from Frozensoull's UNIT mod.
- Adjusted the alt-upgrades of Necropolis - made them slightly darker.
- Adjusted the upgraded Twilight Witch.


Mod files:
CWE-Mechanics - new mechanics
CWE-Visual - visual changes
CWE-rus_locale - Russian localization (not tested, I don't have a Russian localization)
CWE-MapPatcher - utility for modifying maps in "War of Clans" mode. Tested on maps created by the built-in generator.
How it works: run the utility, select the map to modify, click Patch - the program will create a new map in the same directory with the prefix CWE_
The utility may sometimes give an error due to too long paths: try moving the map to the desktop and patching it there


Installation:
- Unpack the archive
- Copy files with the .h5u extension to game folder\UserMODs
- Extract CWE-MapPatcher into any directory

Current version of the mod (v1.3):
Description and download links can be found here

based on the description, I don't particularly like the changes to the Demon Lord's stats:

Demon Lords now rely more on the power of spells than on knowledge - stat progression has been adjusted

on the one hand, I myself suggested making the demon a damage dealer with an emphasis not on darkness, but on chaos, but on the other hand, reducing "knowledge" in favor of "spellcasting" will lead to a constant lack of mana related to the "hellfire" perk and a loss of control over the hero's effectiveness as a caster (it will be impossible to accurately calculate mana consumption, as there is already little of it, and it is also randomly consumed by hellfire) in conditions of mana shortage, it will be impossible to effectively use both hellfire and offensive magic.

I agree, the interaction with "Hellfire" needs further refinement. I envision that the demon lord should choose whether to use attacking magic – and then completely forgo "Hellfire," or dedicate all mana to "Hellfire" (whose effectiveness would increase due to the SP boost) and cast Darkness situationally, for example. Whether there is enough mana for only "Hellfire" or only Chaos needs to be tested further. As does the entire combination of Chaos, "Hellfire," and "Soul Eater." I think finding a balance is possible. P.S. I'm happy to hear any comments and ideas; I'm not very good at balancing myself.

The idea of a "clan wars" mode is really appealing to me! I've wanted to see a mod like this for a long time. Dreams come true! Now I just need to install it... I would like to see a detailed installation guide. Thanks in advance!

I would like to see a detailed description of the installation process.

I've added a section on "installation" to the main post. I've also added a description to the "mod files" section on how to use the utility. Let me know if you encounter any problems with the mod or the utility.

update 1.1

"Clan Wars" mode:
- If the map assigns the Haven race to a player, and the player receives a second clan, then red knights can now be recruited in the tavern.
- If the red knight's army consists only of alt-upgraded Haven castle units, then it receives +2 attack and -1 defense for every 5 levels, starting from the first.
- The red knight receives +1 morale after learning the "Dark Knight" perk (compensates for the squad penalty).

upd: feedback came about problems in 1.1, I'm uploading 1.0 for now as well

Review of the "Clan Wars" mod: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCBU1UUnOak
Author, please fix it; the mod is still in a raw state, but the idea is good.

I'll keep an eye on it!

Wow, Remix, thank you so much for such a detailed review and critique. Now that there's interest in the mod, I'll try to fix the main flaws and write down all the formulas in detail.

Wow, Remix, thank you so much for such a detailed review and critique. Now that there's interest in the mod, I'll try to fix the main flaws and write down all the formulas in detail.

It would be great to integrate this MOD with NHF! :smile26:

Sylvan:
- Added racial ability "Night Scouts": a ranger hero at the beginning of the day discovers neutral armies on the map within a certain radius of himself, if he has already fought with similar creatures (as part of neutral armies). The ability is activated when the Ranger Guild is built, and its effectiveness depends on the Avenger skill and the presence of the Ranger Brotherhood. The idea is that "Night Scouts" and "Sworn Enemy" together should provide synergy.
- Summoning is now the native school for rangers, increased the chance of summoning, light, and chaos perks dropping.

Interesting changes. Overall, the mod is great! I didn't expect anyone to be able to add new racial abilities to the game!

Necropolis:
- ONLY IN SINGLEPLAYER: In battle, the Necromancer summons Mummies instead of Elementals and Death Knights instead of Phoenixes.

How did you achieve this? Did you use scripts or simply edit the files in data.pak? If so, is it possible to do this for each faction, and where exactly?

Interesting mod. I especially liked the new features:

- the "War of Clans" mode,
- racial mechanics for Orcs: "Blood Feud"

Is the author still working on the mod?

Clan Wars v1.3

Throughout this time, I periodically returned to working on the mod, and now I have finally brought it to a new release. In the attached description, you can read about all the changes to the mod, including numbers and formulas, and here I will only list the main new features of version 1.3.

* "Special Path" mechanic. Now, when choosing certain skills, heroes of different factions will experience an increase in some of the hero's parameters at the expense of weakening others. With the "Special Path," you can enhance the combat abilities of mages or the magical powers of warriors. All "path" options are listed in the description in Appendix 1

* City Portal: When casting Teleportation for an additional 15 mana, you can teleport to a city with a Stronghold or to any city in which a Guild Hall of level 5 has been built (for Barbarians, a fully built Hall of Trial and Walkers Hut)

* The use of Rune Magic is now limited to 10 resources of each type per battle. The cost of using some runes has been changed.

* The "Sparkling Fountain" building in the Forest Alliance city: in addition to its main function, it now gives the Ranger several "Nature's Powers" spells, depending on the hero's level (details in the description). This change enhances the Summoning school, which is not native to the Guild of Mages for the Forest Alliance, but whose skill is now quite likely to appear for a Ranger hero.

* Minor changes in creature abilities, spells, skill drop probabilities, and refined mechanics from previous versions of the mod. Details in the attached description

* Skill wheel for the mod (based on Skill Wheel 3.0.3 by Aurelain, Azard) with changed skill drop probabilities and "special paths" marked with "*"

* New visual details:


Links:
- Mod description in Russian
- - a utility for patching maps, including scripts on the map and allowing you to play in "Clan Wars" mode
- - .h5u files for the mod for the English version of the game
- - .h5u files for the mod for the Russian version of the game
- - .h5u files for the in-game skill wheel

Added the racial ability "Night Scouts": at the beginning of the day, a Ranger hero discovers neutral armies on the map within a certain radius, if he has already fought similar creatures (as part of neutral armies). The ability is activated when the Ranger Guild is built, and its effectiveness depends on the Avenger skill and the presence of the Ranger Brotherhood. The idea is that "Night Scouts" and "Sworn Enemy" should work together to create synergy.

The word "synergy" is probably a very trendy word, since you used it.
There's no synergy here. It doesn't smell like anything good...

Let me explain:
1. Sworn Enemies are needed for breaking through defenses. So, there's a good stack guarding something, and what do you do if you haven't killed any of those creatures yet? NOTHING. Your "synergy" doesn't work. If you have killed them, then - hooray, go to the city to change your Sworn Enemies. Powerful. Then come back and kill. 2. It wasn't possible to generate creatures of the same faction as the enemy on the map. You didn't kill them to get the double growth bonus. You didn't go to the city and set up the necessary Sworn Enemies. The racial ability doesn't work. What kind of synergy are you talking about?