Heroes and abilities

[Essain]

My first post, so I cannot help but to point out what an awesome mod this is. 

I have played 5.56 and 5.57 on expert. It is amazing how so many annoying elements have been addressed with finesse.

Currently, I have only one item I would like to change with the game. Heroes die far to easily, especially to enemy spellcasting.
The addition of the arcane spell heroic heart is a great step in the right direction (way weaker then its life heal equivalent, as it should be).

Now, I realize the difficulty of balancing hereoes in the game, but here is a scenario for you that I think should be avoided:

I have gathered a huge army. Say I have 3 heroes and 6 cavalary type units (elven lords or paladins maybe). As I advance, I am forced to engage 1 smaller stack before reaching my target (they are in the way, or tactically it may seem sound to kill them off first to protect my back). Lets say the stack are just 1 spearman. During my attack, on hilly terrain, the enemy spellcaster kills my rogue heroe, of level 7 by casting any number of hero killer spells (nature: call cracks, sorcery psionic blast, and the nastiest maybe death: reaper slash). This costs the enemy wizard only the spellcost and a single spearman unit. 

As a consequence of my rogue dying, the legendary perk dissapears, and I suddenly get a huge upkeep to deal with. As I head back with my army, I am forced to engage with some other small stack, and all my heros die. Consequently, I quit the game. I spent more then half of the game play so far just beefing those heroes up.

A fix for this would be to give ALL heroes a new ability call it maybe "hero bound"

description of "hero bound":
As long as this unit is not on the loosing side of battle, it will not die permanently if it falls in combat. It will reappear in the unit stack with a single HP point.

This makes it into a weaker form of regeneration (which makes me hopeful that this modification should be easy to implement). Essentially, it works exactly like regeneration 0, except that the unit gets only a single HP upon resurrecting after battle.

I code c/c++, so I could maybe help out.

[Seravy]

Well, heroes are pretty much immortal if you know which spells can hurt them and what counters it.
Basically, they are the most difficult to play but also the most powerful, having to learn exactly how much and what enemies you can take safely is what makes them fair.
Their only real downside is, if you don't actually have the necessary counter, you have to use them against other enemies instead of that one you can't handle. But if your core strategy is heroes, you'l plan for having all the necessary counters so this won't really happen much if at all.
It's also especially important to not use them outside critical battles (such as attacking a major city) if there is any risk of losing the hero. Taking out spearmen and minor stacks is the job of less important armies. The AI won't attack a stronger stack than its own, so your hero stack will almost never get attacked and if yes, the attacking army will be large enough to worth the risks.

Raise Dead and Resurrection basically does what you want except against irrecoverable damage, and they are only uncommons. If you want to heavily rely on heroes, picking 2 Life books is an option, too.
Artifacts do the same as well - if you win, you keep them even if the hero dies, so you can reuse them on another hero. You might have lost a level 7 hero but by that late in the game you probably can summon a champion to replace it which will be much more powerful as soon as it gets the first 2-3 levels. So Artificer helps a lot. Finally Famous allows you to hire heroes with more levels gained so you can replace the dead hero with one that's almost the same level.

The mod is being made using a hex editor and assembler. There is no C source code available.

[Nelphine]

Actually, this concern shows up in various places, not just heroes. 

You often have a main army, with killer units, that can destroy any enemy stack. But regularly, some of the units in the army aren't the primary units, they are there specifically as support (in your case this is the cavalry types, but uncommon or rare summons that are supporting very rares also works, or units like priests or shaman or angels that add healing or other minor buffs also qualify). Sometimes the support units are actually the same as the main unit (if the stack is 9 of one kind of unit, such as 9 ghouls or 9 bezerkers), but in this case, they still qualify as the 'support' unit role in describing.

When you attack a very strong stack, you still expect to lose some or even all of these support units.


That means one of the most important thing I learned, was how to have backups of these 'support' units near the main stack. Your main stack should never need to stop - so if you lose all the support in a big battle, you need to have at least that many immediately available and in range! to replace losses in your main stack. 

But once you have these back up units readily supporting your main stack (which incidentally, I love because this is much like actual logistics for armies, including that you need to learn how to defend these stacks) one extra side benefit is that they can be used to clear nonsense stacks that are in the path of your main stack, WITHOUT risking your main stack to extra turns of powerful combat spells.



So for me, this is absolutely a feature, and part of the learning curve of higher difficulties, not something that should be 'fixed'.

[Settemio]

Did the Golden One get redesigned? I just acquired them as a prisoner reward but they only have 2 abilities (Guiding Beacon and Arcane Power). Documentation says they should have Noble and 3 other random abilities.

Also the documentation says the Bard should require 50 fame, I'm sure that's a typo but I don't know if they require 0, 5, or something else.

[Seravy]

Thanks, fixed the documentation. Bard is a fame 0 hero.
Golden One should have 3 abilities and Noble. It's possible to have an "ability" or more be the one that grants additional Caster MP. However Noble shouldn't be missing as it's not random.

[Karol13]

Hi and thank you all, who helped on the Caster of Magic project.

It is indeed extremely polished version of so much beloved MoM, extremely stable and enjoyable.

What I think, and is also called out few time, is that heroes were balanced in a manner of 'de-buffing', which kind of make the game truly more challenging, but somehow does not fit in on all layers of gameplay.

Before, AI did suck on combining abilities, enchantments with items. While human player started a game with exact scenario of hero buildings (making artificer the one pick to go for in many cases, even on Impossible)
When disjuction was not the way to avert the myriads of harmful spells, I could send my hero or hero squad directly into the main city and crush the wizard tower, hoping it will at least weaken the enemy even if not disable.

Now heroes are stronger than most of the creatures, but not ultimately superior, which makes me think if it is worth focusing on items, and heroes in general. The only remaining positives are the minor buffs (extra casting power, a bit of research or 'training' other units). Even main city defense capabilities are hindered, as some spells like web, many de-buffs followed by crack call and such wipe out even demi-god heroes for low costs.

Of course, having much improved AI, there would be the risk that on higher difficulty, the enemy would create Rambo-like squad of heroes / champions, human player would not have a chance to stop. But still, seeing my heroes, who have multiple enchantments, super expensive artifacts, to die in first few rounds against mediocre formidable enemy, is pretty disheartening. 

Sometimes, it feels like I could do much better with Klackon halberdiers, than with heroes. (well, no I would not, but Klackons are now neatly buffed and on Veteran level they are pretty based)

BTW, poor Halflings, not having Barracks, hence never producing units with 1 or 2 levels.

[Seravy]

Heroes are the most difficult to play effectively, due to them also being the most powerful. This is intentional design.
In particular for Crack's Call you need to use one of the following methods to avoid it :
-Wraithform
-Merging
-Enough health to survive it (at least 22 but ~30 recommended for extra safety)
-Don't engage the Nature wizard with heroes, use them vs others
-Invisibility+Flight usually also works as long as you're careful to avoid anything with Illusion Immunity

This list covers pretty much every realm except Chaos, which really isn't suitable for an Artificier strategy on higher levels of difficulty unless you also play other realms. Of course, even then, finding items with the above effects can help enable at least 1-2 heroes to fight against CC.

Of course, having much improved AI, there would be the risk that on higher difficulty, the enemy would create Rambo-like squad of heroes / champions, human player would not have a chance to stop.

Unfortunately not. Unless playing only Life books, human players will have tools to damage and kill even the strongest stacks one unit at a time. It's theoretically possible to build really unstoppable stacks through Create Artifact but the AI isn't able to do so, and even if they could, their "unstoppable" stack would be killed whenever they regroup/split/merge units anyway and the result would be the human player taking the items and using them against the AI.
For the AI it's far more effective and reliable to summon several 9 stacks of very rare creatures from the same amount of mana and at least on higher difficulty it's reasonable to plan around the AI having those spells before the human player.

[Karol13]

Well, sound good then.
After my mid-powerful heroes died faster than tier 1, 2 veteran common units, I thought that even high-powerful champions will be much de-buffed.
Glad that AI still cannot fully channel the potential of artifacts

Will try new run, focus on champions and artifacts a bit more. 

A lot have changed since MoM, where I could buff my melee champion so he could single-handedly defeat 8 Sky Dragons directly in their own node. Or magic user, with Haste who got so much mana, that he basically ran from Sky Dragons on the battle map and shot, taking 20~25% HP each shot, lasting long enough to take one Dragon after another down. 

Yet MoM had this one glitch, when Invisibility was issued via an artifact, enemies could see and target him, I had to cast invisibility via a spell to make it work properly. (but then I was prone to disenchant area and could be then webbed and then crack-called... well wraithform is also an option, but life magic usually plays better for buffing ... with sorcery of course, Phantasmal, Haste, flight, invisibility, magic immunity and such :D)

I hope I can quickly learn CoM nuances as I miss MoM, and CoM is so far 100% bugless (in MoM I encountered a lot of crashes mostly later in the game, CoM is running hundreds of turns flawlessly )

[zitro1987]

Holy weapon and holy armor (especially with spell lock) are an issue with uber powerful heroes and life comes off way way ahead to other realms when it comes to heroes. The endurance bonus switch made matters possibly worse and now i have a level-3 dwarf or thief (lucky, agility) slowly beating serious stacks. I dont even use a single hero-friendly retort

Suggestion is not to exclude heroes being enchanted. Instead an alternative bonus:

Holy weapon: if hero, grant +3 attack. But i think this spell, while powerful early on with no artifacts, is not a risk to game balance unlike . . .
Holy armor: if hero grant +2 armor

[massone]

Of course, having much improved AI, there would be the risk that on higher difficulty, the enemy would create Rambo-like squad of heroes / champions, human player would not have a chance to stop.

Unfortunately not. Unless playing only Life books, human players will have tools to damage and kill even the strongest stacks one unit at a time. It's theoretically possible to build really unstoppable stacks through Create Artifact but the AI isn't able to do so, and even if they could, their "unstoppable" stack would be killed whenever they regroup/split/merge units anyway and the result would be the human player taking the items and using them against the AI.
For the AI it's far more effective and reliable to summon several 9 stacks of very rare creatures from the same amount of mana and at least on higher difficulty it's reasonable to plan around the AI having those spells before the human player.

It's definitely not practical to create hero doom stacks. It takes 10,000 mana to buff a hero to the point where they can fight Sky Drakes 1v1 and reliably win (about 3,000 per maximum power artifact to have all necessary powers and stat boosts + the initial repeated summoning to get the correct heroes that have the good combat abilities, not counting any extra Enchantment buffs it may also need). So it's not just an AI thing--it's objectively worse to use heroes regardless of how well you play it than to summon 2 stacks of Very Rares for the same 10,000 cost, which will still wipe the floor with a decked out 6 hero stack that would cost 60,000 mana. If you rely on finding items, instead you might get hardly anything. I've games where I personally cleared out all but 3-4 lairs on Arcanus on Huge and got barely enough to equip 2 heroes with only Enchant Item tier items and not a single Artifact level find. Even with Artificer, summoning a single stack of Very Rares (or even Rares in the case of Doom Bats) is still better.

Taking look at a specific example, with a specialized Life strat, you could have a War Monk with super agility, starting with base 7 def, add +9 for Demigod, +2 for regular leveling, +4 for sword, +8 for plate, +4 for accessory, totaling 34 def. Now unless your hero is charmed, you also want plus resistance, on at least two items, leaving Bless and Resist Magic as dispellable enchantments. Your accessory needs +movement, and your weapon needs +Hit and attack or an offensive effect, so that leaves 1 open slot on accessory, 2 open slots on plate, and 1 on weapon.

Divine protection is necessary for + Defend, Invulnerability, Lionheart, and depending on which other Realm is played, you'd need Flight or Wraithform or Merging, all of which you want as item powers rather than enchantments that can be dispelled.

That's exactly 4 item powers and your hero is maxed out. Your total defense is 34 +2 To Defend, canceling out an average of 17 dmg, 19 after incl. Invulnerability, with about 30 total health.

Compare that to Great Drake's double 35 attack +3 Hit, which deals 21 average damage, and your "invincible" hero is still going to take 4 damage per enemy initiated attack and 2 per own attack. She'll eke out a win because the Great Drake has a lot less defense, but will definitely lose to a full stack of them. Swap out for Sky Drakes with armor piercing, and a mere 3-4 would take her down.

A Doom Bat would ignore your vaunted defense entirely, and a stack of Bats could kill your hero in two turns without spell support. With spell support, 3 Doom Bats and a Doom Bolt will kill your hero first turn before you can do anything at all. Congratulations, your 10,000 mana demigod just died from 1,000 mana worth of Rare creatures.

Even if we're talking about who's more efficient against AIs that don't know how to counter super heroes, summoning 2 stacks of any Very Rares is clearly superior, especially if you have Sky Drakes with Magic Immunity.

Holy weapon and holy armor (especially with spell lock) are an issue with uber powerful heroes and life comes off way way ahead to other realms when it comes to heroes. The endurance bonus switch made matters possibly worse and now i have a level-3 dwarf or thief (lucky, agility) slowly beating serious stacks. I dont even use a single hero-friendly retort

Suggestion is not to exclude heroes being enchanted. Instead an alternative bonus:

Holy weapon: if hero, grant +3 attack. But i think this spell, while powerful early on with no artifacts, is not a risk to game balance unlike . . .
Holy armor: if hero grant +2 armor

See my above comments. These buffs aren't overpowered on "super" heroes, considering how weak heroes are.