A program for determining luck/morality in Heroes 3! — Offline tournaments.

Монца

18 years ago

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Actually, there are two versions of SoD40ru (Buka released two versions).
There are also two versions of SoD40en (from 3do and Ubi).
to AlexSpl:
probably you should still look for unique byte sequences.

Senatоr

18 years ago

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2. Dirty Player:
What does offline gameplay look like now? 70% of the time is spent generating battles.
The final result of a strong player depends primarily on the amount of free time they have. With the new rules in difficult battles, if you really want to, you can achieve morale and luck dropping for the desired stack on each turn + the ability activating at the right moment. And the battle will be easy to reproduce...

There are many options for changing the battle map. And after tournaments, there will be descriptions like: "the first unit must move to the right so that the attacking stack gets morale." With this change in the rules, in order to compete for high places, you will still have to rely on luck and morale, but now in different ways.

The monotonous repetition of the same actions to generate the perfect battle map. As a result, battles become the key moment of the game: the most difficult, lengthy, discussed, and controversial. And thinking about the movement of heroes and developing a strategy for completing the game (which is what personally attracted me to offline games) become secondary.

As a result, the reason for refusing to participate in offline tournaments is often the lack of a free month for "full-fledged" work with the map. In my opinion, the originality of ideas and non-standard thinking should be what separates players in the tournament table, and not some other factors.

In reply to Senatоr

Dirty_Player

18 years ago

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Senatоr;192273

2 Dirty Player:
The monotonous repetition of the same actions to generate the perfect battle map. As a result, battles – the key moment of the game – become the most complex, lengthy, discussed, and controversial aspect. Meanwhile, planning the movement of heroes and developing a strategy for completing the game (which is what personally attracted me to the offline versions) become secondary.

I absolutely disagree! Apparently, you haven't encountered a map that requires perfect turn management. Even if a player wins all battles without losses, they can still fall behind the leader by a week because they went to the wrong place or at the wrong time. For example, Best of the Best 2007, the last general tournament on Heroes of Might and Magic.

In reply to Dirty_Player

Senatоr

18 years ago

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Dirty_Player;192295

I absolutely disagree! Apparently, you haven't encountered a map that requires perfect turn management. Even if a player wins all battles without losses, they might fall behind the leader by a week because they went to the wrong place or at the wrong time... For example, Best of the Best 2007, the last Heroes of Might and Magic General tournament.

There are also counter-examples – the last Heroes of Might and Magic Tournament, where the key moment was generating a battle on the 1st or 2nd day, and the remaining 9 days were spent running around the map.

Every tournament has challenging battles. Morale and luck on each turn are not indicators of skill. In my opinion, generating battles is as routine a process as hero-camping, skill tree progression, and killing hundreds of slow units with a ballista. Only for all these actions, automatons have been invented, while battles still have to be generated manually. The monotonous repetition of tedious actions can kill any enthusiasm. Of course, turn management is essential and a much more complex process, but often, morale generation also becomes a filter for weeding out players!

cyberB

18 years ago

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Senator
The words are right, and if only morality/luck would align on a zeroed-out cranium (with 100% repeatability), then they could be disabled, and the game wouldn't lose anything.

But then you would have to disable all monster abilities as well - in fact, now scorpians will almost always paralyze, medusas and basilisks will petrify, and so on.

A simple example: seven basilisks can now easily defeat any army in a single stack. We choose moves so that the petrification occurs the first time, and then we play with weights, turns, and defenses. The result is that on each turn, at least one unit will attack with petrification without retaliation. And so on, every turn. It's not even a problem if the stack is faster than our basilisks - we'll lose one, but the remaining six will still generate anything.

Even if there are no options with petrification on one turn (taking into account all options), it's not a problem - the ability lasts for three turns. On the second or third turn, we will definitely find one :)

But to disable all such abilities in order to destroy such generation - that would be too revolutionary.

In reply to cyberB

Dirty_Player

18 years ago

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cyberB;192352

Senatоr
The words are correct, and if only morality/luck would align on a reset creature (with 100% repeatability), then it would be possible to disable them, and the game wouldn't lose anything.

But then you would have to disable all monster abilities as well - in fact, now scorpions will almost always paralyze, and medusas and basilisks will petrify, etc.

Is it really as bad in Heroes 2 as well? Are they also relying on morality and luck in the same way?

cyberB

18 years ago

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Secondly, there's no wait time, at least.
Otherwise, I don't know. We need to ask the binary natives.

Fireball

18 years ago

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2 cyberB and Senator
Do you often play Heroes of Might and Magic II and V? In those games, everything is reproduced (in V, it's completely independent of the previous playthrough, and in II, I haven't checked). And it really does happen that you can find completely insane, advantageous setups, but more often, you need morale for a powerful stack on the first turn, and it just doesn't work out. In my experience, battles in II and V are much closer to "real" battles than what could be generated before in III. I haven't fully understood the mechanism of the changed generation, so I can't say for sure, but there is real hope that the battles will become less "fantastic" and take less time.
The only question that has already been raised is: how much can you manipulate the weight, but it's better to ask the programmers about that.

In reply to cyberB

Dirty_Player

18 years ago

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cyberB;192356

Secondly, there’s no waiting time, at least. But otherwise – I don’t know. We need to ask the binary natives.

It’s just very difficult for me to imagine such a situation where you have to sit and generate… Although, if it arises, why not… They kill golems, zombies, and elementals with ballistae. Therefore, such a situation, like the example with basilisks, will remain on the conscience of the organizers (who, by the way, will have to repeat this battle based on the description :D).

In reply to Senatоr

Alex_R

18 years ago

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I agree with Senator! I also think that current top offline players have more free time than they used to (rather than skill)... yes, maybe 2 years - 1 year ago the level was lower, but the offline games were much more interesting... the current offline game is awful (IMHO) :smile48: Of course, I didn't stop playing offline games only because of this - I just don't have time, and when I do, I don't want to waste it on offline games, as I'm not interested in taking "non-prize" places due to the lack of "generation" + and, strangely enough, there's also a lot of negativity in offline games... so I'm 200% against the current offline format, and if I had even more time, I would spend it on even more online games... I never cheated in battles, I don't even remember trying to maximize the map and still getting "prize" places... P.S. I don't understand programming, but I'm interested in the question: is it possible to fix online saves in Heroes 3 (like it was done in Heroes 5)?... and how difficult is it to implement?

Fireball

18 years ago

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I also think that current top offline players rely more on their free time than on skill compared to the past. Yes, maybe the level was lower 1-2 years ago, but the offline games were much more interesting. The current offline games are terrible (IMHO).

I'm really curious how much time people spent on it back then, but I can't ask. In my opinion, the most time-consuming part is playing in a group of four.
I'm not sure if I can be considered a top offline player, but I can say for myself that out of the last 5 tournaments (2 in a group of five, 2 in a one-on-one, and one in a two-on-two), I played 3 in one evening (about 5 hours each), one in a day (of course, with breaks for eating, walking, etc., but from the start to the final), and only one took longer, but if the one-on-one game had a map editor and cheats for scouting, I could have finished it in a day.
How many decent games can you play in an evening? 1-2, correct me if I'm wrong. So, one tournament is equivalent to about 3 online games. Is 3 games a month (or 1 tournament) a lot? Although, if a person is REALLY busy, they don't even have enough time for sleep.

I never generated battles, I don't even remember trying to maximize the map, and I still got "prize" places.

This is because there were fewer strong players back then.

To AlexSpl and Monza:
Can you tell me how the actions of stacks - attack, defense, wait, movement range, etc. - affect the parameters responsible for morale, luck, and abilities, even if only approximately?

In reply to Dirty_Player

Catch

18 years ago

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Dirty_Player;192353

Is it really as bad in Heroes 2 as well? Do people still rely on luck and morale in the same way?

No :) They don't really rely on it that much. Although there are some difficult battles. I managed to win a couple of tournaments by taking down dragons with single archers and 2-3 genies. But the first time, it happened quickly, in about 10-15 minutes of generating. And in the other two tournaments, I considered it my signature move. However, it didn't bring me victory in any of the tournaments :D
I did see some really difficult battles. I wasn't the one playing. In school, they shared save files. But the most interesting thing is that other players could always repeat the victory in those battles, and what's even more surprising, they found other ways to win than the one the player who shared the save file had used.
But generally, no one specifically generates for morale/luck :) In most cases, smart turn management brings much more benefit.

Kamikaze

18 years ago

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Message from Dirty_Player
Is it still as terrible in Heroes 2? Do they still just rely on luck and morale boosts in the same way?

In our third co-op game, I tried to boost morale in one battle...for a "+5 attack" hammer. And I succeeded. But then I read the rules carefully and realized I had to collect gold. So that battle turned out to be irrelevant, meaning the whole thing didn't bring any benefit.

In reply to AlexSpl

SS-D

18 years ago

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AlexSpl;190798

2invisible: Fast stack operations can hardly be implemented solely by fixing the exe, but separating single units could be attempted. And even then, only through a banal edit of changing zero to one by default in the split window. If this helps online players (and others), it can be done. Byte editing allows for only small changes, and not all kinds.

If the esteemed Monza doesn't mind, I entrust him with creating the patch (as far as I know, he is a professional programmer), especially since this was his idea.

Sorry, I might be behind on events, you know how rumors are (online).
Fast stack operations — of course it's possible 100% and it exists (changes in the TE configurations of so-called 0 to 1, this will be SoD - trimmed TE)

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Kamikaze;190533

Nobody is a cheater!!!
Respectfully, Kamikaze!

Again, belatedly — I'm fully behind VBN; once I found out, I couldn't not respond.
:smile38: :smile38: :smile38:

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cyberB;190323

Since "hurrah for vbn" and "we won't allow the result to be annulled" have been mentioned here, I will remind you once more that vbn, by changing the game's resource file, thereby violated its mechanics and thus gained not just an advantage in the game, but a decisive advantage.

Moreover, this was done in only one battle — according to him, on another machine. I allow myself to doubt this. If an offline player notices something like 100% battle repeatability (down to Wizard casts, down to unicorn morale — they get morale by moving back to any (!) cell of the field), he will immediately, first of all, recall if he recently did something to the game or system — exe (patch), rmg, cranim, etc. And secondly, he will definitely (!!!) start checking if other battles repeat. But vbn (holy own naivety!) noticed that the battle in the save repeats, was surprised, but didn't check this in other fights. In general, it turns out he didn't play the tournament on this machine. He only fought one battle. Which, let us remind ourselves, can theoretically be won with the current army without this. I don't believe it.

Geez, late again, what a life, I'm lagging and not following events.

Although I don't have the habit of changing or messing around with files, BUT — when loading an autosave once, and unfortunately my 2nd and 3rd computers didn't change their intentions, namely — the programmed appearance of a bird for the AI repeated, and just wouldn't disappear upon loading the auto several times; someone might say this auto is nonsense, it was just a coincidence for VBN.
Maybe I'm not a finished programmer, but I'll say — that changing animation certainly won't affect the probability of events unfolding, it's ridiculous, and as I understand it, everyone found out about this because of VBN's kind naivety; I honestly ask you not to doubt him, whoever objects, I will delete all posts and ban for life .:smile31: :smile31: :smile31:

In reply to SS-D

Dirty_Player

18 years ago

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SS-D;192586

Although I don't usually change or modify files, when loading an autosave, the computer repeatedly and unfortunately didn't change its behavior; specifically, the programmed appearance of the bird next to the computer kept repeating and wouldn't disappear, even after loading the autosave several times. Someone might say that autosaves are useless.

Actually, everything is correct, and that's how it should be, because the computer moves with the same intervals, so the battle bot will trigger in 100% of cases!

SS-D;192586