Why do we need Legendary ability?

[Seravy]

The problem with heroes is items. The item system is basically twelve wildcard slots the player can fill with any stat or enchantment in the game. Compared to that, their stat growth isn't all that much of a problem.
For simplicity, let's look at one stat, the best one, armor. From levels, you get 2, 11 or 15 armor depending on having or not having Agility (unless we nerfed it already in which case even less). From items you can get up to 8+4+3= 15 armor. So the base stat+items already puts the hero at 60-95% of their full potential, and any additional levels only fill the remaining 5-40%. Out of those levels, the first half is easy - you either cast heroism or fight 1-2 battles, no more needed as later game content is worth much more exp. The remaining half of the levels only add like 20% more power to your hero overall at best. It feels amazingly powerful but in reality it's not such a big deal - unless you had crap gear in which case it is way more impressive.
So changing the advancement rules wouldn't really do all that much as you are hoping.

Heroes are already immortal if you play them right. That's the problem, not the heroes dying. Pretty much anything that can kill a hero can be blocked by equipment or avoided somehow. It does take a lot of knowledge but that's the price for what's the most powerful strategy in the game. (and even with that price they might still be too good, I'm not 100% sure about it though. But I am worried. The problem isn't so much that the player has a few unkillable units, the problem is they might be able to still move them around fast enough to win the game before the AI gets a chance to overwhelm them with their economic, magic or military superiority - which is their only way to counter that. And it isn't strictly related to one particular hero stat either - high armor is one way to have an immortal hero, but regeneration and invisibility have a potentially similar effect among others.)

Most heroes are already worth their price at level 1, melee heroes might not unless you can give them some gear, but ranged and resource producing heroes definitely are.

[Bear]

Agree about items. I just didn't touch this topic as their effect is not affected by hero level. It is sort of fixed amount addition. So you say they are immortal, huh?
I'll play more than and see if I have anything important to add.

Not the hero advancement related but item related since you've started this conversation. I feel like there are a lot of items in high tier monster location. So many I can equip all my heroes and then just keep selling them again and again every time I beat another lair/node/tower. There is no need for create item spell anymore. I probably use it at most once in a game. It wasn't like that in original. I am sure you have thought it well already together with the community. Just sharing my observation.

[rakenan]

I feel like the real problem with heroes is that you invest so heavily in them that they almost have to be immortal. With normal and summoned units, if one dies you just get build or summon another. Crunch all you want, we'll make more. That's really not true with heroes. First, the hero you lost may have abilities that cannot easily be replaced. Next, if you lost the fight all the items the hero was using are just gone. Finally, it takes a pretty substantial amount of work to level up a new hero. Sure, low level champions can be as effective as high level heroes, but only sometimes. Some of the better heroes are very close to champion level, and some of the worse champions can be pretty lame.

You just can't balance heroes so you send them in expecting some attrition losses in the fight. Attrition is for units you can reasonably expect to replace. That is not heroes. If you reduce their survivability to the point you expect them to die over the course of a war, nobody will use them at all because it's a waste to go to the trouble of recruiting, leveling, and equipping a hero just to lose it. Better to just flood normal and summoned units across the land.

There are solutions, but I doubt they can be implemented given the limitations of the Master of Magic engine you are modding. It's astonishing you've managed as much as you have by modifying binary files.

[Bear]

I feel like the real problem with heroes is that you invest so heavily in them

Agree with everything you said. You are almost repeating my point in this post above. Heroes require so much attention that they become a game in a game with its own flavor and strategy and (most funny) its own goal.
https://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/show...#pid709159

[rakenan]

I feel like the real problem with heroes is that you invest so heavily in them

Agree with everything you said. You are almost repeating my point in this post above. Heroes require so much attention that they become a game in a game with its own flavor and strategy and (most funny) its own goal.
https://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/show...#pid709159

I kind of wish heroes could operate like Legendary Lords in the Total War Warhammer games. If a LL gets defeated in battle - which isn't that uncommon - they are "wounded" and disappear from play for a while. Several turns later, they "recover" and show up in your capital with their levels and abilities intact, ready to use again to help retake what you lost while you were hindered by their absence. Losing a hero in battle is a major blow, but it's a blow you recover from because you haven't lost everything you put into your lord, just their use for a while (which includes any experience and loot they might have earned for you while wounded).

I doubt that's doable in MoM, but it would help bring heroes more in line with the rest of the units in the game. They could be beaten in battle because getting beaten in battle doesn't cost you all of the time and mana and effort you invested in them. They don't have to be immortal in battle to be useful, because they are immortal out of battle.

[Domon]

a thing i was musing about was

- lowering heroes power level a little bit, expecially maximum power level
- generally reducing armour while increasing hp
- making resurrection an arcane, not life, spell, so everyone gets access to recovering lost heroes.
- shifting their strenghts so that most of them work better while leading units and not as good with other heroes

this makes heroes less of an a high risk/high reward thing, makes more worthwhile to invest in them, while also helping prevent them becoming an unconquerable asset.

maybe resurrection could cost more or scale with a hero's level, and this would also probably mean that irrecoverably killing an hero should be a rarer thing, but whe can instead afford having spells that one-shot / disable them.

[Seravy]

The amount of power level reduction we need if we want heroes to be basically a permanent unit that always comes back and can't be killed would be ridiculous. For starters, we need to remove items because they are far too good for that.
Armor is obvious but invisibility, invulnerability also has to go, high movement is obviously bad because it makes ranged heroes too good, same for merging. Abilities like Agility or Might are obviously bad, so is Blademaster or even Capacity. Anything that makes a hero fight better is bad. Pretty much every hero needs to ONLY have support abilities like Leadership. Caster is unacceptable as well, at least anything higher than 20-40.
This can be done but it does mean we lose half the content or more. I rather not go in that direction.

A better, but impossible to implement, approach would be to scale hero power level on time rather than other, uncontrolled factors. Basically, heroes would gain experience from playing turns (a lot) and from battles (somewhat less but still significant) and levels would give all the stats and abilities to a hero. Items can't exist in this system, or they need to be extremely marginal (such as attack+3 being the best item for the weapon slot, yes, only one ability, and spell effects shouldn't) otherwise they outweight the leveling system, like they do currently. The benefit is, heroes can't be stronger than the current phase of the game, so they can't be a threat to game balance. (and higher tier heroes make sure heroes hired later are still useful despite missing out on turns.)

Either way, it's one or the other, permanent heroes OR good permanent (somewhat random) items. Can't have both at the same time, and MoM/CoM as a way too detailed and fun item system to lose it. Without good items, lair hunting would be much less interesting as well.

We'd have no issue if items were forced to be no better than where the game is, for example the best thing you can find before 1406 has a max of +2 to a stat and at most an uncommon spell effect. That works, but then the contents of lairs would need to depend on timing rather than pre-generated at the start of the game. Since lairs "upgrading" the monsters in them over time is not strategy friendly, and treasure being upgraded rewards not taking it, this system wouldn't work well.

The other alternative I see is generating new lairs on-the-fly instead of at the beginning. Unfortunately that's not compatible with having nodes and towers...

Also see : http://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/showt...#pid617702
http://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/showt...#pid630409

[Seravy]

I came up with an idea that at least partially solves this. Instead of scaling item budgets by turn count (which is either unfair or require scaling monsters by turn as well), changing the item generator that makes random items or selects a predefined one to not pick items with "problem" abilities in the early game should work well. The high power abilities only appear when it's reasonable, but item budget isn't wasted if you get one earlier, you are just limited to finding the abilities that are "safe".

For the time being, this means :

-Random generated items before turn 100 will not contain the following item powers : Defense +5, Defense +6, Invisibility, Pandora's Box, Merging, Teleportation, Haste, Movement +3, Movement +4. Predefined items containing the above abilities will not appear before turn 100 from any source.

Maybe I should also include Invulnerability? It's as good as 6 defense and stacks with it, so I'd say yes?
I didn't add Regeneration : it's a very powerful effect but only helps the hero survive already won battles, it doesn't help it win battles nearly as much (although extra hp per turn is really good, it won't do nearly as much if facing spells or enemies that can actually kill the hero as defensive effects). You'll still need a good army going together with the hero to take advantage of it.
I didn't exclude Divine Protection because Lucky can appear on heroes naturally anyway.

Is turn 100 late enough? It still leaves a window of about 100 more turns to take advantage of the items before heroes get obsolete on medium difficulty levels such as Advanced or Expert, less for Master or Lunatic. (Turn 100 is 1408 April)
Maybe turn 120 would be better?

[Sapher]

i dont like it. It's not fun when you know you'll get a trashy item for a hard fight.

[Seravy]

Do you have a better idea?
Invisibility is definitely a problem too early, we've already seen that. Everything else, I'm willing to change. I'm unsure about the defense stat, as we've already proven it isn't really going to have much of an effect. Movement boosting is similar, there isn't as many sources for it but using Cavalry with Endurance and casting spells is about the same. I'm unsure about those as well (including Merging, Teleport and Haste) although the hero can get much faster than other units and is able to outrun even the fastest enemy. Pandora's Box was designed for Chaos Artificers, it's supposed to be very rare in treasure items. Including it makes sense although it's not strictly necessary. It doesn't appear on items below 1500 total cost so it's rare either way. Finally, including Invulnerability is definitely a good idea. It's not available any other way in the first half of the game, and it is equivalent to an additional 6 defense that stacks with other defense sources and isn't affected by armor piercing and illusion. It's the single most powerful stacking defense effect in the game.

(also, this is subjective but I don't think those items will be "trashy". Regeneration is possible, so are spell charges, defense up to +4 (or 6 on predefined or plates), up to 2 movement which btw is the maximal amount for all item types except bows, lionheart, elemental armor and a lot more.)

So to make it short, I'm willing to change what's included on the list, if you can give me a better suggestion. Same for the turn count.