HotA - General Questions and Discussions Auto-translated

But when, on turn 131, facing a top opponent, you lose your main hero due to such nonsense, I'm sorry, but that's unacceptable. It's not just a momentary frustration; it's common sense screaming at me. And it's not about "changing the rules"; where did you even get that idea?

I think you're just upset because you lost to a top opponent.
Morale has always been a mechanic in the combat system. You just weren't as upset about it before.

I had an idea (maybe it's not new, but I haven't heard of it).

Make it so that neutrals can't trigger morale in the first round. And then it's random, as always. If this is technically possible, it would save many games that suddenly end in nonsense, like ifrits triggering morale in a dungeon, splitting into 6-7 units in the creature bank, etc.

KobRa definitely suggested something like that about 6-8 years ago. Although on WoG, they usually played without neutral morale, so it seems he was talking about a way to bring it back.

In my opinion, random morale in its current form is nonsense, both for neutrals and for players. As far as I remember, for WoG, they also considered options to reduce or eliminate the randomness from the morale mechanism, but no adequate solution was found.

The Lizard doesn't consider many options; thanks to his extensive experience, they are already ingrained in his subconscious. During gameplay, he often doesn't even fully analyze the situations, especially the non-standard ones, and can make mistakes out of nowhere. There's no time to think, forward, forward!! Speed!!
But this doesn't negate the fact that his decisions are generally (in almost 100% of cases) good. His subconscious is working. So, I like the direction of his thinking here.

Basically, what I want to say is this:
Full randomness can always be ideally mitigated not by completely banning randomness, but by using pseudo-randomness. And if done properly, this idea can be further developed in this direction.
That is, the principle remains, but its activation cannot exceed certain critical thresholds - in our case, the obvious ones have already been mentioned:
1) A solo stack does not trigger morale in the first round.
2) Out of five stacks, at most one triggers morale in the first round.
I would suggest thinking further about something more universal, like a maximum of [percentage of morale multiplied by 2 or 1.5] in all other rounds (including human battles).

The path of pseudo-randomness was once applied in Dota and made the game much better.
Wild critical hits stopped occurring one after another, misses and dodges stopped triggering endlessly.
All these <5% probabilities are fun to watch from the outside (and preferably from a great distance), but when it negatively affects someone in tournaments, which, for example, regularly happens in Hearthstone, it actually looks like madness.

don't change anything, everyone knows the rules, taking risks (rushing) is up to each player.

Losing a match because of these percentages is as unpleasant as losing due to a one-sided match. I don't see any reason to fix the morale (considering the additional presence of artifacts that reduce morale). If you want to play aggressively, consider the risks; it's all logical and simple.

In a mirror match, a one-sided match doesn't happen. I proposed my idea primarily for mirror match templates. I mentioned this in a private message to De Luxe, who, for some reason, also chimed in here with "rules." The rules are irrelevant here. It's strange if one player loses morale in the same battle as their opponent, but the opponent doesn't (because they have a different army, a different hero, etc.). Does that mean the opponent considered the risks, and you didn't?? That's absurd.

P.S. The fact that a "greja" stack isn't mirrored is also a problem (for the same reason).

Well, the idea of having only one round does make sense, but I'm not sure how feasible it is. Of course, it's closer to balancing the game. Personally, this aspect doesn't bother me much. And when I wrote about "rules," I meant that people are aware that morale exists and will...

p.s. The fact that the greyscale texture isn't mirrored is a real problem (for the same reason).

Does it still not mirror?

Is it still not mirrored?

If this has been fixed, then I apologize, I must have missed that update.

Yes, it should be fixed in the latest version of HotA. So, if you encounter this again, please report it.

Could you please tell me how to add the Clash of Dragons template to HotA? I see it in the _HD3_Data/Templates directory within the game folder, but HotA doesn't recognize it or any other templates located in that directory.

Because this directory is for HD versions. HotA has been using its own for quite some time: HotA_RMGTemplates.

Hello. Where can I post my map template and, if possible, get feedback on it?

Here,
/forum/section/62/
simply create a thread about your template with a diagram and description of the idea, and suggest playing it.
If someone is interested, they will play, and you will get feedback. If no one is interested, the topic will gradually fade away.

Good day, I've wanted to ask for a while now: where can I find information on all the hot keys used in HotA?

I have already answered this question, but I will duplicate it with a few clarifications.

A complete list of hotkeys for the original Heroes 3 does not exist; in fact, there are very many of them across various menus. The main hotkeys are listed in the manual for the original RoE game (ignore the link formatting): http://heroes3wog.net/download/[Heroes%203]%20Restoration%20of%20Erathia%20Manual.pdf
Hotkeys that seem to match those in the manual are also listed here: https://homm3sod.ru/keys/

For the HD mod, hotkeys are described on its website: https://sites.google.com/site/heroes3hd/rus/description/extended-ui

Specifically in HotA, the following hotkeys have been added:

Adventure Map:
— While holding Alt, you can see the path length (in movement units) of the current hero to different cells on the map (displayed in the bottom bar and via right-click).
— While holding Shift, you can select a hero by clicking on them on the map (instead of ordering another selected hero to go exchange with them).

Town Window:
— E — hotkey for exchanging between heroes.

Combat:
— G — hotkey for casting own spells for Faerie Dragons and area shots for Magogs, Liches, and Powerful Liches. The original F hotkey for faerie dragons is no longer active.
— Alt — hotkey to toggle stack action (melee attack/shooting, return/do not return after attack, attack/cast, move/cast).