Posts from Heroes 5.5 WarGame Edition - Tactical Edition.

1) Such a boost for skeletons is only possible with farms (which means losing extra tempo), but it is possible that they won't have farms either (since the total number of buildings is 36 > 35 for Humans and Dungeon, which affects the calculation of damage from towers)
7) This can be done, but then Necrodrakes will lose their advantages (the same Hydra is built at the same tempo, but requires nothing and is upgraded by the Castle, plus regeneration after the upgrade, while the Dragons have a smaller upgrade on farms alone)
Added 1 hour 46 minutes ago
So far, the Undead's early game through Castle or Reapers on week 1 is weak; I need to think about how to strengthen it.

1. Then, remove farms for skeletons; they are not needed for a cheap Tier 1 unit (let Militia have this as a faction feature).

7. Quoting you, "Such buildings as Tier 7 always need additional requirements, because they are too strong." The upgrade with farms or Castle is approximately equal at the beginning, but the temptation to buy a flying tank on turn 3 is very great. Tier 7-6 units (6000-3000 cost) should not be available before turn 5.

To strengthen the early game through Castle or Reapers, the following can be done:
1. Lower Necrodrakes from level 6 to level 8.
2. In their place, temporarily place Vampires without any connection.
3. Move the Temple of the Underworld to the place of Vampires, disconnecting it from the Stronghold.
4. Move the Castle to level 8, as in other races.
This is what I see, but I think the Necropolis scheme can be redrawn more competently.

Why is the first tier free? Necropolis starts with a guild of mages, not with a tier 1 building. The 7th tier for the undead is not really a 7th tier; they essentially play without one. It's one thing to get +2 angels from building an angel dwelling now and +2 angels every week, and another to get +1 bone dragon, which is only half as strong. If you want to increase the dragon production, spend time building farms (+1 building). But even under these conditions, you'll still be behind by 1-2 units (3-6 thousand) due to the initial influx and upgrade. Boosting production with a farm and a castle is not the same, as the castle also speeds up the upgrade and is generally a more powerful building (it affects other tiers as well).

Okay, tell me then, what is the reason why the following opening strategy isn't optimal: build skeletons on turn 1; upgrade them to archers on turn 2; and dragons on turn 3? By buying the minimum (1 dragon, the rest archers), I can easily clear the guards in the first week (even without buying a tent or having the Undead skill), with minimal losses. Going through zombies, ghosts, or other tiers seems worse than rushing to a mobile, super-tank unit. P.S. There's an option to tie such a strong Necropolis building in your mod, like the Temple of the Underworld (capturing villages and turning their creatures into undead), to a less popular base (branch) like zombies or ghosts (for example), thereby increasing the attractiveness of that tier. Tying the Temple to the Stronghold makes this branch more of a priority (for days 4-7 of the first week) than others.

Regarding the Temple of the Underworld, here's how I'm planning to implement it: The Temple of the Underworld requires at least a level 15 city upgrade and the presence of a Capitol – meaning it can't be built quickly, and strategically, it creates complications in that there can only be one Necropolis with a Converter. I want to place the Grail in the Castle branch – the Grail not only increases income but also growth; its connection to the Capitol branch is equivalent to its connection to the Fortification branch.

P.S. There's an option to tie such a powerful Necropolis building in your mod, like the Temple of the Underworld (where capturing villages transforms their creatures into undead), to a less popular base (branch) like zombies or ghosts (for example), thereby increasing the appeal of this tier. Linking the Temple to the Stronghold makes this branch more of a priority (for days 4-7 of the first week) than others.

That's exactly the point: if you consider the conditional value of the Temple to be 0 (no transformations), then the early-game starts with Castle or Reaper are relatively weak, but if it's not 0, then it's a different story. But how to specifically assess the benefit of this building in the early game is still unclear. It's like a kind of analog to training grounds, but without a limit and with conditions (bring in enemy creatures, i.e., high-tier units must be built in the Necropolis and in another city, because there's little benefit at low tiers).

In terms of economics, the following trend emerges: Low-level creatures are more promising in terms of development than high-level ones. This is because their weekly growth rate is often equal to or even higher than that of high-level creatures. This is related to the support provided by the Stronghold and Citadel. For example, when building monks, 5 of them appear (for a total cost of 3000), and the weekly growth rate is the same. But when building swordsmen under the Stronghold, 5 of them appear (for a total cost of 2000), but in the long run, the weekly growth rate will be 10 (for a total cost of 4000). Under the Citadel, the growth rate will be 15 (for a total cost of 6000). This is significantly more than for the monks. But the immediate effect (one-time arrival) of building monks is stronger. Another example: archers and griffins. Griffins require a Citadel. Under the Citadel, 6 archers appear at once (for a total cost of 1500) and 18 per week (for a total cost of 4500). Griffins, on the other hand, appear 3 at a time (for a total cost of 3000) and the same amount per week. In short, the most "promising" type of development (to get the maximum number of troops in the long run) is the natural one: build low-level units first, and only then high-level ones. But an early transition to high-level units, on the other hand, will give more advantages here and now, in the first week. Another interesting fact: the cost of top-tier creatures is comparable to the cost of top-tier buildings. For example, 1 Titan will cost 5000 + 2 gems, while the Capitol (the most expensive building in terms of gold) will cost 6000. In other words, hiring even 1 Titan/dragon and other legendary creatures is as significant as building the most important buildings, which will be reflected in the price. It is also worth considering that the arrival of resources from the map will occur more slowly: 1) each pile of rare resources will yield exactly 1 resource (instead of a random 2-4) or 2 wood/ore (instead of a random 4-7) 2) each pile of gold or chest will yield 500 gold (instead of a random 500-1500) Why is this done? To maximize the importance of strategic objects - mines - compared to one-time piles. And also for ease of calculation (the smaller the numbers, the easier it is to calculate). In fact, this means that everything becomes "more expensive" in terms of gold by a factor of 2. Because to collect the same 5,000 gold, you will have to consume as many as 10 chests. Hiring heroes also becomes twice as expensive. But, unlike the original, heroes will arrive with relatively strong starting armies (worth 3000).

The idea is good, but the difference between Low and High tiers (especially at the beginning) should not be significant, and effectiveness should depend on the map, faction, character development, and other factors (variability should be a priority). Reducing the resource gain from resource piles is good. For chests: if gold is only 500, experience should also be only 1000. Regarding starting armies and heroes: I'm in favor of making hero recruitment twice as expensive. It should only be done when a full-fledged second hero is needed, not just their army (for the main hero, it should be cheaper and more effective to build creature dwellings than to recruit them in other heroes at the tavern).

"Unstable Mana" doesn't work for the Orc - it's been verified! This leads to the following problem: Perks whose SkillType is SKILLTYPE_STANDART_PERK do not take into account SkillPrerequisites (since they are not SPECIAL_PERK or UNIQUE_PERK, which do take SkillPrerequisites into account). This means that it is impossible to specify a link to a particular hero class for them (the game practically does not react to the HeroClass line - this is either a remnant from previous versions of the game and no longer works at all, or this line still plays a role in determining the perks that will be randomly given when leveling up*, which is in no way related to our problem, but only limits the randomness). Since we cannot specify a hero class for "Unstable Mana" (neither through HeroClass nor through SkillPrerequisites, as it is a STANDART_PERK), it turns out that "Unstable Mana" will always be offered to the Orc. Here, it should be noted that in ToE, we have perks that can only be obtained by certain races, and they do not require prerequisite perks from the same skill, but this is only because they still have SkillPrerequisites, but it refers to a perk belonging to another skill (example: Exorcism for Dwarves - it is in the Summoning magic and does not require Summoning magic perks, but SkillPrerequisites specifies the "Completed Rune" perk), and we are against links between skills. There is another way, but it doesn't suit us - it is based on the fact that some skills are duplicated with the "BARBARIAN" suffix, but we do not have a duplicate of the "Luck" skill. * From Heroes5_Manual_3.0.pdf: "When a hero levels up, the following are usually offered: - 1 "new" skill; - 1 skill "for improvement"; - 1 "standard" ability (available to all hero classes); - 1 "special" ability (unique to the hero class). If the hero cannot receive any of these at the moment, then a replacement is offered: a skill instead of a skill, an ability instead of an ability. If there is no suitable replacement, then nothing is offered." Added 9 minutes later That is, we need to have three standard perks in Luck that work for all races, and then you can develop their branches as you like. Added 7 minutes later Actually, maybe it's possible to specify a racial skill in SkillPrerequisites instead of some perk??? Then we can find a way out - I'll check it now:smile14:

Checked – it works!!! The idea: we use SkillPrerequisites, specifying a racial skill in it – this creates a connection between different schools in the mechanics (which we don't want), but in reality, it won't affect us in any way, since the racial skill listed in SkillPrerequisites is always available from the beginning of the game. Pros: - We solved the problem without actually creating a connection between different schools. Cons: - It is visually displayed like this (see screenshot), i.e., for each race, when viewing information about "mutable mana," their racial skill will be displayed instead of luck; in the case of "luck" itself, mutable mana is not displayed in the list of available perks, although it is available (the skill level embedded in the mod and displayed in the game will correct the situation).

So, what's the point of disabling the fluctuating mana only for the Orc?

So, what's the point of disabling the fluctuating mana only for the Orc?

Yes.

Fire 2 Fireball (5) = 25 + 0/1/2/3 x Magic * Fire Wall (6) = 25 + 0/1/2/3 x Magic, 2 rounds 5 Armageddon (30) = 40 + 0/2/4/6 x Magic Why do Fireball and Armageddon have a twofold difference in the coefficient before Magic (for expert level 3 and 6, respectively)? As I understand it, the logic behind the development of area-of-effect spells is as follows: as the level increases, increase the area of effect, not the damage. In the original, it's not quite the same: Level 2 - Lightning - area 1x1 - damage 20+20sp Level 3 - Fireball - area 3x3 - damage 20+20sp Level 4 - Meteor - area 5x5 - damage 20+20sp Level 5 - Armageddon - area all - damage 30+30sp That is, Armageddon stood out for some reason - I assume that because it is impossible to choose the area of effect (minus), they added damage (plus) and thus balanced it out.

Because Armageddon also damages allies, so its area of effect isn't much better than that of a Fireball (and is definitely worse than that of a Meteor). In other words, Fireball and Meteor also damage allies, but this can almost always be easily mitigated by choosing the right location, while there is no such option for Armageddon.

Got it, thanks – so I guessed right. Actually, I tried comparing the damage output of spells in Heroes 4 and Heroes 5 (I used Heroes 4 for comparison because the speed isn't as crazy there, and rushing isn't possible). I leveled up characters in both games to tier 20 and got damage values of 2640 and 1000 (rounded) for Shock and Disintegrate, respectively. I recalculated the Heroes 5 formula to achieve the desired damage and got a coefficient of 18 before the 'sp' variable (as in the WarGame Edition) – and I always thought you had overdone the reduction in damage from Chaos spells. Anyway, your formulas are good:smile02:

Updates on map layouts (Castle, Dungeon, Necropolis):