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**Hello, Heroes World!** I've been watching Heroes online and offline streams for several years. I experienced the transition to HotA and still miss the top SOD streams. I wanted to suggest some ideas on what else could be done. In short, as players' skills improve, due to the imbalance of map generation, SOD games have become about 70% luck-based. To determine the strongest player, you need to play a BO7 (Best of 7) series, at the very least. A SOD variant suitable for competitive play is needed. Common sense suggests that the percentage of one-sided games should be sufficiently small. Such a SOD variant could exist. A variant in which the map generator is changed as little as possible, or not at all. Changes could affect the game mechanics. Possible set of changes: 1) Remove the movement penalty for any type of terrain. 2) Pathfinding increases the minimum speed bonus to +3, +5, +7. 3) Small bonus to movement on swamps, snow, and rocks - for native creatures, and on sand for nomads. 4) The ability to use any scroll once at the expert magic level with the current mana, after which the scroll disappears. Also possible: 5) Move Teleport to the Fire magic school, but this requires changing the skill upgrade branches for all heroes, with an equal chance for each element. (Something like this was in WoG). 6) Weaken Necromancy, for example, by 10-15-20%, + HW Rules. 7) Another option could be a combined artifact made of four spheres - a counter to Creature Skills/Amulet of Protection. 8) Technical: add new monoliths if this helps with one-sided games. 9) Strengthen individual weak creatures of weak factions. For example, a 3/5 cell attack for Nagas/Greater Nagas, the ability to approach and attack for Titans, a targeted shot for Golems, possibly only under the control of the hero and/or a human hero. 10) The Guildhall restructuring can be left as in HW Rules. In general, HW Rules are assumed as the basis. All changes are to increase the potential of the late game, increase the likelihood of the game transitioning to the late game, and encourage exploration of the territory. 11) An observation tower that reveals an area under the fog of war, and not necessarily located in it. Relevant for treasure hunts on XL maps. 12) Artifact exchange in the castle; I don't think this raises any questions, and it could be allowed. Often, the game was decided by the lack of exploration of even nearby valuable objects due to the unconditional priority of tempo (moving towards the opponent). I'm not suggesting how to solve the problem of broken map generations, although their presence keeps Heroes III out of esports. Judging and mutual agreements between players remain necessary. Perhaps bugged map generations cannot be removed without a global restructuring of the generator. The priority of the changes is to preserve the generator and avoid making significant changes to it. This also applies to blocking roads. I am in favor of games being playable even with these issues. I also support the practice of restarts. However, such changes are clearly not orthodox. And the main question is, would it be interesting to watch games with these rules? I leave this question open. There are many patches for Heroes 3, and such a patch could also appear, I think. Except that 11) would be difficult to implement. P.S. all of this may have been suggested somewhere, I haven't been following everything. P.P.S. this post was planned since the time of registration; the reason is that I came up with the idea about scrolls. PPPS if something else hasn't been suggested and will be considered by the Hota-crew, I'm not against it, no license, it's all for SOD, you know.

There was also an idea about increasing mobility by paying off neutral creatures on the Diplomacy map for 2x-1.5x-1x the cost of the unit. But with everything combined, it might be too much.

One-time use of scrolls, including in battle (even just from the active slots), can still be a huge imbalance. On the one hand, it can greatly increase the ways to conquer a specific map, and on the other hand, it can practically eliminate many interesting and challenging battles, especially in the early game. Unless there are usually few wells generated on the map. We could leave this possibility only for control scrolls (and not come up with a way to implement it in battle). Or make it a bit more exotic, allowing "burning" scrolls in battle if there is no (upd. not built) corresponding guild level. Such a "barbaric" approach.

Regarding "useless" skills and artifacts, I'm in favor of leaving everything as it is. Some things can be tried to be improved. For example, increase Mysticism, Learning - allowing the recording of scrolls of levels 1-3, 4, and 5 in the book.

Improving individual units is also an interesting topic. You can adjust stats, or you can add unique properties. The latter seems more interesting to me. Personally, I like the idea of a "ghostly" creature from Warlords of the Ancient World, but I don't know who to give it to so that it would be "lore-friendly." Demons are already strong. For example, giving Pit Lords two demonizations (under their own hero / for the entire battle (to everyone) / only to humans) could also be interesting.

Regarding new spells, a "scouting" spell seems appropriate for the magic of air. It could be made a unique spell when developing the Scouting skill, with fixed parameters at three levels.

Adding two more slots for primary skills seems quite reasonable with these new features

I remembered another idea... A ban on Dimension Door into cells that are not (fully) explored. This could significantly delay the full late game, but the priority (as with all proposed changes) is to increase the value of scouted territory and scouting away from roads. Also positive, in my opinion, is the elimination of the abrupt transition from gaining control to a Dimension Door rush. You first need to "see the opponent on the horizon" before attacking. Scouting skills (or artifacts) become more important, especially for jumps in the underground. The fog of war becomes much more strategic. One must either ban it or script the generation close to the human player's main.

Well done, you came up with ideas for an entire mod! Now, two questions: 1. Who will actually implement all of this? 2. And will players actually play it?

Thanks)
1. I simply laid out a set of similar ideas in "brainstorm" mode. Maybe some of the active modders will be interested (they aren't only on HW). It seems like much of it should not be difficult to implement for someone who is already own the subject. I posted it on HW because I am primarily interested in the domestic player community, as a spectator.
2. Maybe someone will decide that writing such a mod and seeing what happens would be interesting. Perhaps people still have spare strength and time for something like this, but that's clearly an off-topic question. Of course, I'm curious how skilled players would handle such a version of SoD. If you don't mess up the combination of all options (or conversely, enable everything on the principle of "when everything is OP, nothing is OP"), experienced players might even manage a match, it seems to me. Primarily, fundamental decisions are intended, so there is hope that deep balancing and testing won't be required. Well, or it will immediately become clear whether a particular change is worth adding. Overly complex ideas can be left aside.

The "Scouting" spell could work like this: it is automatically added to the spellbook when the Scouting skill is learned, granting +1 to the sight radius for 10 mana – this can be used a certain number of times, with a maximum sight radius equal to that of the standard Scouting spell, achieved at the third level of the skill. The hero can use it once per day on the adventure map.

Perhaps, not for multiplayer, but a "Cove" or "Asylum" object, where you can disembark from a ship without losing movement points, would be very logical.

Another idea related to map generation is worth mentioning. Poorly and unevenly generated maps can simply be discarded. With modern processing power, this seems quite feasible. Even without fixing one-sided maps, statistically, one out of a hundred generations is likely to be a "gem," unless the template is completely flawed. Yes, there would be some work involved in establishing selection criteria, but at first glance, they seem obvious: the density of zones based on their value, the length of the path to key points, the absence of exaggerated blocks, one-sided maps, and buggy passages (not necessarily). High-quality parameters that allow for quick "setup" and tempo can possibly be excluded altogether, even in cases where a Castle/Fortress is locked behind a gate. After all, there are still restarts available.