TiaC wrote:Why is this? I prefer it to the old initiative=speed because it allows for units like gargoyles who can cross the map while still going last. It also means that fast creatures actually go more often.
Creatures have a separate speed and move stat in Heroes IV and King's Bounty (in KB it is called move and initiative). Hell, if all you were concerned with was slow creatures being able to
fly across the map, flying creatures were able to move to any part of the board regardless of speed in Heroes 0, 1, & 2. The only new idea that Heroes V brought was having units refresh actions on a cooldown schedule so as to make spell durations and the effects of wait actions hard to eyeball. That wasn't a good thing. That was stupid. Durations are a really important part of the game, especially the duration on counterattack refresh, which people fucking need to be able to fucking plan around.
TiaC wrote:Heroes V just went with free caravans in the later expansions. So not the instant gratification of VI, but a bit simpler than IV. Something like that, then?
I think that instead things should be set up with Heroes VI's imperial army reserves that you can recruit from out of any castle that is set up to have an imperial recruitment post. And that local troops would bleed into the imperial reserves at some rate if the town had reached the appropriate level of administration. So you could recruit minotaurs
now in whatever dungeon their dwelling is in, or you could wait a while and recruit them wherever you wanted. But you wouldn't have to select specific points to mail them to ahead of time because that's annoying micromanagement that makes you remember what the different cities are named and collapses completely when the random city name generator inevitably names two cities "Lovendon."
I think the Imperial Army Reserves could be expanded somewhat, so that your Capital put some national troops directly into the reserves each week for each city you owned - so that a Dungeon nation would always benefit from capturing towns of any type without actually pulling in the strategyless bullshit that was Heroes VI city conversion.
TiaC wrote:Perhaps have the town hall just put a cap on build level? Without a city hall you can't build the highest tier of buildings? It'd be nice if by combining this with Leadership it could make sense to leave towns at low levels more.
In Heroes VI, each fort level adds to your per week unit production. And since all cities are converted to one type, and the number of units that cities make is exactly equal to the number of stacks your hero can lead, every single city always builds all the fort upgrades. It succeeds at getting you to build the arrow towers, but it certainly doesn't make it much of a strategic
choice. My preference would be to have the fort upgrades replace the dwelling upgrades entirely. So you can recruit Medusas if you have the Garden of Stilled Voices, and you can recruit Minotaurs if you have the Labyrinth. But if you have a Garden
and a Level 3 Fort you can also recruit Medusa Queens, and if you have a Labyrinth
and a Level 3 Fort you can also recruit Minotaur Kings. So you wouldn't necessarily feel you
had to build fort upgrades in every captured city.
Income generating buildings are a different story. You're going to build all the fucking income buildings because in the long run they have a negative cost. The only way I think you could introduce dynamic choice into their production is to make each income building do something
in addition to merely producing income and allow players to build them in different order. Building a marketplace improves your resource exchange rates and generates income, a port allows you to build ships and also generates income, a foundry lets you build siege engines and also generates income, and so on.
TiaC wrote:I think you could get similar strategic depth by giving each town a few units that aren't enabled each game. If a town has a total of 10 types of units, but only 7 are enabled each match then strategy must change from game to game.
I was thinking more like 13 units, which is easy enough to do when Troglodytes and Troglodyte Hoplites are actually different units that can be fielded side by side. Heroes VI nominally had 14 units per city, but it was all bullshit because the upgraded types fully replaced the unupgraded ones. Having 13 real units that you chose 7 of for your army would allow for 1716 differently composed armies even before you factor in the secondary skill that lets you have two different stacks or armies composed of troops from two different cities. Such a game could have more strategic depth out of one city than all of Heroes V or VI (especially VI, which only had one final army per city and only five cities).
But it's more than just wanting strategic depth, it's also about wanting the kind of crazy content that the previous games were known for. Heroes 3 had eight cities when it came out, and it really feels pretty insulting when new versions have less than that. Hitting eight isn't even particularly difficult, the current King's Bounty games have: Castle Humans, Barbarians, Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, Lizards, Demons, Undead, and several importantly different flavors of "neutrals" (such as Dragons and Animals).
Making a new city isn't even terribly difficult. For fuck's sake it has less than twenty units, and at least four of the units are probably the unupgraded and upgraded forms of the basic race of the city with a different job. You could totally fill out a faction with as little as two actual fantasy monsters (see: Castle. Five different flavors of humans and their upgraded forms plus Griffons and Angels).
And there's no shortage at all of races to build a city around, over and above the fact that there's no particular limit to how many cities you could throw out with the basic race being humans with a different culture and unit set (see: Castle & Barbarian humans in King's Bounty or Castle and Tower Humans in Heroes 3). Heroes of Might & Magic has at various times thrown down: Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Goblins, Orcs, Gnomes, Halflings, Sprites, Gargoyles, Lizards, Gnolls, Gremlins, Troglodytes, Dark Elves, Imps, Snake People, Skeletons, and Centaurs - while there is also certainly room for Bugs, Atlanteans, Robots, Beastmen, Spirits, Nezumi, Vanara, and Giant Frogs based on Might and Magic lore. And while in Heroes 0 the Gnome, Elf, Dwarf, and Sprite were all in the same city type ("Type C" it was called), there's ample precedent for making them all the basic race of different cities.
All in all, asking for 8 cities simply isn't onerous at all, and merely a sign of good faith. To see how simple this is, let's put
twenty below the spoiler:
Castle
Race: Humans
Theme: Medieval European troops + Heraldic monsters
Fantasy Units: Griffon, Wyvern, Angel
Stronghold
Race: Orcs
Theme: Viking Barbarians who are Orcs
Fantasy Units: Valkyries, Winter Wolves, Trolls, Jotun
Sanctuary
Race: Nezumi
Theme: Weeaboo
Fantasy Units: Ki Rin, Ogres, Kamaitachi, Tengu, Kappa
Teocalli
Race: Lizards
Theme: Aztec Lizard people.
Fantasy Units: Couatl, Onaqui, Ozelotl, Basilisk, Tyranosaur
Foundry
Race: Dwarves
Theme: Steam Punk Dwarves
Fantasy Units: Golems, Droids, Cyclopses, Cave Worms
Hideout
Race: Gnolls
Theme: North African Pirates, and also Ghost Pirates
Fantasy Units: Ghosts, Mummies, Scarabs, Ammit
Necropolis
Race: Humans and Undead
Theme: Eastern European Vampire Kingdom
Fantasy Units: Skeletons, Zombies, Vampires, Liches, Bone Dragons
Dungeon
Race: Troglodytes
Theme: Greek Cave Monsters
Fantasy Units: Minotaurs, Medusae, Harpy, Cerberi, Tartarian
Bazaar
Race: Gnomes
Theme: Pseudo-Arabic Sultanate
Fantasy Units: Rocs, Simmurgh, Manticore, Ghouls, Phoenix
Tower
Race: Gremlins
Theme: Wizard Academy
Fantasy Units: Gargoyles, Winged Monkeys, Scarecrows, Slimes, Iron Dragons
Temple
Race: Sprites
Theme: Buddhist lore.
Fantasy Units: Naga, Garuda, Vanara, Nymphs, Loxxo.
Asylum
Race: Frog People
Theme: Madness and Chaos
Fantasy Units: Hydras, Chimerae, Shoggoths, Beholders, Invisible Stalkers
Hive
Race: Bug People
Theme: El Hazard + Nausicaa
Fantasy Units: Swarms, Doom Beetles, Remorhaz, Umber Hulks, Scorpion Beasts
Inferno
Race: Human Cultists & Imps
Theme: Generic Fiery Demon World
Fantasy Units: Horned Demons, Efreet, Succubi, Mariliths, Arch Devils
Shire
Race: Halflings
Theme: Pastoral Halflings with enchanted farm animals
Fantasy Units: Cockatrices, Gorgons, Glow Sows, Golden Rams, Unicorns
Bastille
Race: Dark Elves
Theme: Spiders and Prisons
Fantasy Units: Phase Spiders, Nightmares, Driders, Black Dragon
Haven
Race: Elves
Theme: Generic Elven Fantasy Kingdom
Fantasy Units: Pegasi, Ents, Centaurs, Green Dragon
Fortress
Race: Humans, Lycanthropes, and Beastmen
Theme: Animal Totemism
Fantasy Units: Werewolves, Goatmen, Behemoths, Displacer Beasts, Cave Bears, Thunder Birds
Conflux
Race: Elementals
Theme: The Four Elements with a vaguely Turkic architectural sense
Fantasy Units: Air, Earth, Fire, Water, and Magic Elementals. Plus Weirds and Genies.
Sunken City
Race: Fish People
Theme: Polynesian Shark Men plus D&D inspired Atlantis
Fantasy Units: Kraken, Yuan-Ti, Mind Flayers, Sirens, Pooka
Now obviously, you'd have to use non-copyrighted terms at times. Mind Flayers need to be Soul Suckers, Ents need to be Dendroids, and so on. But it's really not hard to populate 20 cities or 30 cities in the Heroes style, if that's what you want to do.
-Username17