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Since people were talking about ongoing, up-and-down, once-popular-now-shit series of games, I thought I'd bring up HoMM.

Way back in like 2001 or whenever, everyone liked HoMM2 and HoMM3 (I didn't obviously but that doesn't count). It was sprite-based, it was clearly 'Kings Bounty with knobs on', and it had some really stupid mechanics. But it was the time of Starcraft and Counterstrike and people loved them anyway.

Many moons later HoMM4 came out and it was shit. They broke more stuff, left the other lame stuff in, and made it hell-ugly Civ2-style tile-based graphics. Someone went backrupt, and then some Russians made HoMM5 which is basically 3, but with realtime graphics instead of sprites.

Now, what I wanted to know is if anyone ever gave a shit about the story or 'lore' as net folk call it. It turns out there's some absurdly detailed backstory with timelines and shit which has basically no bearing on the game at all (ie you can't choose a 'date' to play at to affect political relationships, etc which is good because they're no diplomacy). I saw in the Suikoden thread people talking about shit from over many games and spinoffs etc, and it struck me you could probably have a similar discussion about HoMM and it's insane 'lore'.

Now I know people on this board played these games. Five years ago fucking every son of a bitch did (except me, but hey). So I'm interested in fannish discussions surrounding a) evolution of mechanics (the HoMM fanbase is apparently almost as bad as Fallout in this regard) b) the silly plot I know nothing about and c) why the hell there's a game on the shelves basically identical to a 90s Mega Drive game. Some Russians are even making an EVEN CLOSER TO KINGS BOUNTY game called 'Kings Bounty: Legend' or something!

My mum loved them.

I played one of the 'hard' scenarios and beat it, then went back to my other games once the novelty had worn off. I think that was HoMM3.

I've always hated them, but then I can't look at them without saying 'holy shit guys, stacks? Are you serious?'

I knew people who were INSANE about HoMM3, but even THEY didn't give a shit about the retarded story as told through the campaigns. They just did AI skirmishes and used the obvious sploits and lack of balance to rule everyone.

FOR THE GRIFFIN EMPIRE ETC ETC.

HoMM1 was fun. HoMM2 was better, and HoMM3 is my favorite - I've gotten many people I know hooked on it. HoMM4 was an atrocity, and I haven't played HoMM5.

However, I never really cared much about the story, except as a means to keep playing. In fact, I nearly always played the Single Scenario maps, or even the random maps when I wanted to play. Still do (for HoMM3), every once in a while.

And for the record, I loved the Conflux the most in 3.

HOMM3 was an okay game (I've never played any of the others). Addictive, though the mechanics of combat sucked. I (sort of) felt attached to some of my heroes and wanted to see them through everything.

Insofar as the story went, though....

It's hard to figure out how you can create a fantasy world and give it a story as BAD as most of the fantasy games are. Warcraft, for instance, has incredibly, utterly, indescribably inane plot points. HOMM is no better, frankly.

Master of Ossus wrote:HOMM3 was an okay game (I've never played any of the others). Addictive, though the mechanics of combat sucked. I (sort of) felt attached to some of my heroes and wanted to see them through everything.

Insofar as the story went, though....

It's hard to figure out how you can create a fantasy world and give it a story as BAD as most of the fantasy games are. Warcraft, for instance, has incredibly, utterly, indescribably inane plot points. HOMM is no better, frankly.

Yeah that's my thing, they've obviously put effort into it and built it up over years and years (like Warcraft), but it's a) inane and b) meaningless. It's flavour text, and nobody I've ever seen play a HoMM game gave a shit about it.

Rhoenix, HoMM5 is almost exactly the same as 3, but a few fixed mechanics. It's still broken from the ground up (stacks, growth, no retreat etc), but at least necromancy isn't worthless and heroes can attack without using spells now. It's still rubbish compared to stuff like Dominions though (which I also hate due to the hopeless UI, but it's got good mechanics).

Ahh yes, HoMM... Stark may even like MORE things than me recently, and I mean that in jest, as I've honestly got it in for fanboys of any stripe--but this game in particular STILL evades me. I think it's fun, but I think checkers can be fun, and checkers fucking sucks. I've often been told that I hate everything, and I honestly think I'm closer to that label than the man above me is, especially where beloved gems of someone's childhood is concerned. This game has some issues.

Now I know people on this board played these games. Five years ago fucking every son of a bitch did (except me, but hey). So I'm interested in fannish discussions surrounding a) evolution of mechanics (the HoMM fanbase is apparently almost as bad as Fallout in this regard) b) the silly plot I know nothing about and c) why the hell there's a game on the shelves basically identical to a 90s Mega Drive game. Some Russians are even making an EVEN CLOSER TO KINGS BOUNTY game called 'Kings Bounty: Legend' or something!

C and B, I have no idea. There's plot? Really? Honestly... is that necessary? C'mon. One of these days I'm just waiting for the game-maker to say "Plot is irrelevant, smash monsters together you rabid fuckers" and be done with it. Kinda like the 'story' in Dawn of War. "In the Future there is Only War. GET TO IT!"

As for A... I'm a backseat developer well on my way to becoming a frontseat developer, and boy, does this game have room for improvement.

1) Stacks: You have to be fucking kidding me. Stacks weren't even cute when they first came out, and they're ultra special ultra not cute now that we have Supreme Commander out there busting a nut across the screen with 500 million units at once. Supreme Commander has all the personality as the aforementioned checkers game (though with deeper strategy), but I think the idea of flying/divebombing griffons attacking hordes of demons while a deathmarch of skeletons grinds it's way across the fields--pulling the dead with them in their wake--is a pretty easy thing to grasp. Think of what would happen if we translated these armies into a M:TW type of graphics engine, and then made it turn based? Wouldn't that be better?

Why don't they just give it up? Stacks are moronic, and the epitome of NO GODDAMN STRATEGY. Get rid of stacks. Make actual units. It's not so hard to group them up and send them around that way. Just let me assign them a 'grouping type' from a dropdown. 3 options: Horde (all of them in one mass), Squad (divided into groups of 12 or so, what's a real squad size?) or Support (works independantly, like catapults or giant beasties). Bonus points if these also automatically assign AI based on that unit type.

Extra double bonus points if you allow for an extremely basic 'squadbuilder' option to let me mix-and-match units on the fly into custom mixed squads. The turns are fucking long enough as-is.

2) Crudugly Isometric Map: The time for this has passed as well. There's no need for a complete 3D map, I'm okay with an abstracted 'battle map' of sorts, that's in-keeping with the game. But just like how the characters have moved to 3D, let's move the maps to 3D, and not from the side, and not so fucking stupid. A little more room for combat, if you'd please, the same way we're switching from a stack of skeles to actually showing 300 skeletons running across a blasted wasteland, kicking up clouds of dirt as they charge forwards into enemy crossbow fire.

3) Growth: There's so many ways that this is broken that it's not even funny. Growth, in all it's forms, is such a horrific idea that I can't believe they didn't can it sometime prior to the first game being made, ever. In one sense, it makes sense, right? Fucking no it doesn't. The obvious issue with this is that not only does it make it extremely difficult to catch up, but it also bludgeons most types of strategy into the mud with sheer numerical obstinance. And don't get me started on the damnable undead and their skeleton hoarding (as in, collecting to the point of absurdity, not as in making a horde, which they also do). Please, let's replace this system with something less retarded.

Know what might be fun? I could sink gold and gems and shit into something I want, like a legion of dragons. Okay, spent. But I don't get them for thus-and-so turns. I'm not terribly enamored with the idea of basebuilding, so I'm not in favor of building extra recruitment structures just so you can have a 'dragons only' army, but please, instead of buying them that turn, let me buy them now and appear in subsequent turns, and let the rating be a maximum output per day, perhaps. Nothing is more aggrivating than battling your way to the enemy's fort only to have him buy an entire legion of beasties to oppose you when you get there. Usually not a serious issue, but it's just one more frustration with the system already.

4) Heroes: The hero system is completely broken. It favors very specific heroes, and makes a wide variety of them totally worthless. If heroes are reduced to nothing but a barrel of static 'special effects' like 'goblins throw flaming shit rather than normal shit, for +1 damage' then please let me have more than one. Grimgoblin McPyrodung is not worth not taking The Ravenator, who gives me like 2 free fire attacks per turn, or something. Making magic so essential is alright, I guess... it'd certainly look more interesting if I actually got to see the result, but it really favors some heroes over others. If the system wasn't so random, this wouldn't be an issue, but randomness is anathema to these kinds of strategy games. It's not like I can really use the terrain to my advantage or some kind of WWII brilliance to defeat my enemy. It's basically throwing stacks of numbers at each other until one side dies. It's really barely any more complicated than Civ's combat--which has never been the platinum standard of genius combat modelling.

5) Army Types: They've been working on this, but it's still flat. Armies are all basically the same sorts of things, and it's a big issue. Since I can't place my archers behind infantry or something tactical like you can in most wargames, there's nothing stopping someone from just massacring units that they don't like and there's hardly a damn thing I can do about it. If I'm lucky there might be a rock or something to hide behind, thus making my stack absolutely useless...

...anyway, more importantly, there are very few armies that 'play' significantly differently from each other. Their Top-Tier units, also, are also pretty similar, generally. And certain ones are going to be real badasses while others... aren't. I'm fine with asymmetric warfare, I think it's sweet. But asymmetric doesn't mean "one side has a good special unit while the other one is identical except it sucks." I've actually had people tell me it's an advantage, because now I don't need to spend money on them, as if not having unstoppable badasses in my army was beneficial from a budgetary point of view. If the Elf Army is good at range, and my army of sentient river silt beasts is not, that's fine--but please, let's diversify the playstyle some. Otherwise certain armies are really going to beat the fuck out of you, since you can't just specialize your forces due to Growth. If the only things I have that can stand up to the Enemy Army are my ranged units, I can't just build more ranged units to balance him out.

6) City Control: The city control mechanic is bullshit, flat out. I understand you want me to keep armies at my base, I get it. But since controlling more territory is generally not even going to entitle me to much of a stronger military (until I take someone's fortress), it becomes really tiresome. And chasing down an enemy horse as it meanders around my territory is the most frustrating thing I've ever seen. If the goal is to reward someone whose hero magically allows them to drag a giant behemoth's ass cross country in a matter of minutes, then huzzah! Mission Accomplished! However, if it's supposed to be some kind of strategic maneuvering system, it sucks ass. The Total War games had pretty asstacular main map movement, but they were way better than this. Armies don't just stomp around like lunatics, and it becomes really problematic when I'm trying to stop someone rampaging around, and they can clear out and collect a million things easily, due to combat not costing much movement (if any).

Worse is that you can just gank someone's city. No siege, no nothin'! Well, at least, not often. This is a big issue when someone decides to pull the "Mother Of All Armies" trick, dump all their forces into one area, and just send him at you. Do you queen-swap? Do you ride out to fight him? What to do? It's generally a game of chicken at that point, but the Growth system can make things frustrating--moreso than is useful. It's not like I can draft recruits from my loyal citizens to help me retake my city. Since my city is the only place I can make troops, as well as the only territory that really allows me to do anything of merit or set up a static defense, if someone makes a concerted attack on it, they can quite often grab it. You can, of course, retake it. But the loss in military dudes--as well as the stupid Growth cycle--can really kill you. There's no reason for it to be such a black-and-white thing. There should be more battles conducted in the field. OH WAIT!

7) NO FUCKING RETREAT: No wonder I never engage someone in the field unless I have an army of 500 Cockgoblins and Satan's Wang itself on my side, if I retreat, everything dies. It should be called "commit seppuku" because that's basically what it is. This makes battling for territory impossibler (since it was already idiotic to bother) and it makes anything but complete, 100 percent violent death a rare occasion. Not even the Adeptus Astartes know such unflinching discipline. If a routed army scattered, but could be reformed, that'd be one thing. But the fact that my hero DIES, essentially, or at the very least deserts my cause... is really pathetic.

So basically the growth system means that if you ever get behind on troops of equal quality, you may be fucked in a battle. Since the way the game is designed favors massive stacks of units on one army, you want as many forces in one place as possible. Your units can't even move by themselves, for fuck's sake, so it's nearly impossible to reinforce an army. And because apparently this game was made on Kronos by Klingons, retreat is not an option, so if any small army gets caught by the enemy's massive ultrastack army, it's basically going to be a complete and utter annihilation. This discourages much creative play, because what's the point? Buy a bunch of cheapass heroes to go Solo and grab resource points and shit that the enemy grabs, and have your giant Doomfleet crush any opposition you run into. Best case, beat h is army, and then send whatever is left to his base before the end of the week. If you can steal his Growth phase, it's gonna be game over.

The cool thing about HoMM's backstory back in the day (HoMM 3) was that it shared a common universe with the M&M RPGs - that is where most of the richness of the setting comes from, in HoMM it is indeed flavor text mostly - but combined it does set up a common atmosphere, which is cool. Plus HoMM 3 had, for its day, the way cool prerendered videos.

Then the idiots decided to do an armageddon on the world in one of the HoMM 3 expansions (that Gelu guy and someone else fighting with ubermagic swords), which was a really stupid move considering the, somewhat irrational, love of the fans for Erathia. M&M 8, with the same fucking engine which was dated in M&M 7, and at this point antiquated, is released with the setting moved to the never-before-heard-of continent of Jadame. Compared to VI and VII it sucked. To compound it, they released the new, weak, HoMM 4 in a, again, completely new setting, so the very cool tie in between series was lost. And to compound even that error, the atrocity known as M&M 9 was released which looked and played like something made by an untalented shareware developer.

And that was that for that company.

But that period when HoMM 3 and its many expansions along with M&M 6 and 7 were in the spotlight, the series was, on the one hand, good on both sides and on the other the shared universe made the story lines more rich in both.

All right, time to go back. WAY back. To the time when there was no Heroes of Might and Magic at all, but simply Might and Magic.

The backstory starts sometime around 1986 or so when the first Might and Magic game came out. It was fairly deep even then, though severely curtailed by the limitations of the technology at the time. I was in 4th grade or thereabouts and I actually almost finished that game, despite it being ridiculously difficult in the riddle department. The story continued in Might & Magic 2 and 3, which I did not play and later in 4 & 5 which together became The World of Xeen. After that, the backstory moves to the world of Enroth and Erathia.

I have no idea if Heroes 1 had any kind of campaign plot at all, but HoMM2 certainly did. The plot was actually fairly well crafted and forms the basis of the plot for M&M6 plot. Never did play the expansion to HoMM2, so no idea what was there. Then came HoMM3, where the Restoration of Erathia campaigns again happen before M&M7 and the Shadow of Death campaigns are a sort of prequel. The Armageddon's blade campaigns generally sucked ass while the Shadow of Death ones kicked it.

Might and Magic 8, despite all the crap said about it, is a game that I actually like, even if it is somewhat contrived and the engine was as old as it was. I even have no objection to the continent of Jadame, since Enroth is not that large as a world.

Might and Magic 9, now THAT was a spectacularly fucked up piece of shit that had maybe one or two redeeming plot ideas buried somewhere among all of the shit (most of which did not work even in the rerelease that was patched out the wazoo). It also had all the various gags that have been inserted into the M&M series since the first one, except while in the earlier versions they were funny, in this one they were so fucking lame it beggars belief. Compared to that lameness, chitoryu12 is the epitome of cool.

*shudder*

I can't believe I just said that...

HoMM4, when it came out, sucked. It was fucking indescribable. After two expansions and patch version 3.0, it was actually a good game, even if many of the graphics (mostly units) were a step back from HoMM3. The reason it failed initially was that they tried to make it like AoW but fucked up with the way stacks, recruitment and growth were handled.

The Homm4 campaign plots continued from the armgeddon of the destruction of Enroth and Erathia and many of the campaign plots were actually very good (the only problem being that too many scenarios were made so you could not really fail them even on Champion level). The HoMM4 world was never mapped as such (that I know of anyway), so the HoMM5 campaigns could theoretically take place in the same world, building on the fledgling nations that emerge in HoMM4 to become the factions of HoMM5.

I happen to be very much mainly a single player type of gamer, so for me the story is important as long as it is not completely fucked up (see M&M9). I've liked most of the HoMM series campaign stories. I did not like what they did to the world of Enroth by just wiping it out, because most of what followed has not been as good, but the HoMM5 backstory is not too bad at all. Depends a bit on the different campaigns. When you tie all of the shit since the days of Might and Magic 1 together right up until the point just shy of the opening cutscene of HoMM4, it's a mighty powerful story, even with all of the WTF moments and things that come out of left field. Afterward, not as bad, but some of the individual stories in the various campaigns in HoMM4 and 5 are great.


As far as the mechanics of the HoMM series go, I have no objection to them. It is not meant to be realistic in the sense something like Dominions or the Total War series is in depicting the battlefield. HoMM battles always have been more reminiscent of chess than real battles. I've always liked the way they do things. Even HoMM4 was quite playable, but the hero units in that game really were Heroes with a capital H and all. With certain skill combinations, it didn't really matter what was thrown at a hero, he kicked its arse. Downside was that all heroes were identical, some just looked uglier than others.

In HoMM5, just as in HoMM3, all heroes have individual specialties and starting skills, which does make some more attractive than others, but with the coming revamp in Tribes of the East, the problem will be far less pronounced in HoMM5 than it used to be. The creature growth system has its drawbacks and it doesn't have even a nodding acquaintance with realism, but it's never bothered me.

Cov, the 'no retreat lol you die' thing is probably my biggest problem with the game, but it feeds into the whole 'you can't possibly win once you fall behind' thing. If you lose all your lvl6-7 guys, you're DEAD, the end, game over. The growth system (which isn't too objectionable by itself) means that you will never, ever recover, and barring awesome hero use and several throwaway armies you're just fucked. It's common in RTS's to get into 'unwinnable' situations, but it's almost built into the HoMM system that this WILL happen.

Oh and regarding stacks, I thought it was hilarious that the HoMM5 main menu has a realtime 3D melee combat which is dynamic and constantly cycles and looks fucking cool... but ingame, you get one guy stabbing the other guy in the same animation every time. If you've got 400 archers, they still only shoot one arrow, etc. Even if it was a toggle, or if there was some resolution to it (ie, stack shows 1 guy for every 20 or something) it'd look a million times better. In HoMM5 it's a great missed opportunity, and the main menu animation shows that they KNOW what people want.

I don't mind the actual creatures and abilities themselves, though, and I think they'd do well (and be interesting) in a Dominions or Total War-kind of game.

Stark fails because I didn't know what HoMM was until Edi mentioned it.

I remember playing a Might and Magic arcade game, and I recall there being an N64 game.

I'm going to quote you out of order because I'm a manipulative jackass.

Stark wrote:I don't mind the actual creatures and abilities themselves, though, and I think they'd do well (and be interesting) in a Dominions or Total War-kind of game.

Yeah, they're all relatively fun... I think if they changed the format up a bit we'd see more usefulness from them. As it stands, so what if my guy gets, like, retaliation at range? So? It's not like I can force him to mix in with the Melee guys, to punish anyone who hits him at range. Stuff like that really limits the tactical merit of a lot of the abilities since you can focus fairly easily on the most pressing issue--and also because a goddamn stack of 20 dragons takes up the same tactical 'space' as a single goblin.

Stark wrote:Cov, the 'no retreat lol you die' thing is probably my biggest problem with the game, but it feeds into the whole 'you can't possibly win once you fall behind' thing. If you lose all your lvl6-7 guys, you're DEAD, the end, game over. The growth system (which isn't too objectionable by itself) means that you will never, ever recover, and barring awesome hero use and several throwaway armies you're just fucked. It's common in RTS's to get into 'unwinnable' situations, but it's almost built into the HoMM system that this WILL happen.

No Retreat! No Surrender! Goblins--Prepare for Glory!

On it's own, a 'no retreat' option might not have been a gamebreaker, if there were other adequate systems in play. There's a lot of situations in games like Total War where Retreat turns into a massive debacle and you get banged up the ass by Horses and decimated. But that, at least, is because a rout IS a massive debacle. An orderly withdrawl while you have even the upper hand should not be a rout. If I want to make it to my allies territory without being intercepted, retreating from a battle to disengage is a perfectly reasonable strategy, and I shouldn't be forced to fight to the death just because someone bumped into me. Most damning is that the hero dies because of it, and must be re-purchased on top of every single unit. Ouch! Was that REALLY necessary?

I see the Growth system as such a big issue because it encourages Moneysink tactics. Once you have enough worthless gems, wood, and so on that you can afford to turn them into gold--and enough gold that you can purchase your entire allotment of units over the course of a single week--then you're basically capped out at 100 percent capacity. There's no way to damage an opponent's infrastructure, really, without capturing a significant amount of his mines and such, but even so it's not easy, as you can't leave static defenders.

And a moneysink favors the guy with the most crappy gem mines and such to sell, and that usually translates to the guy running at 100 miles an hour in your territory, grabbing all your utterly undefended infrastructure. If you send a lone hero to get it back, that guy is fucked. If you send a small force, they're going to be a total waste. If you send your main army, he can just run--or possibly grab your city, if you had recalled forces from there to get him. Eh. It's a mess. And the "Impossible to Win" Scenario is way too common. For a game this slow, it's really unforgivable. In an realtime strategy game, it's okay, cuz the match only lasts like 5-30 minutes anyway, so you just quit and shake hands and go again. In this, you may have invested DAYS of your life into a match, and the slow tide of numerical superiority has doomed you for the past 80 hours of gameplay.

Stark wrote:Oh and regarding stacks, I thought it was hilarious that the HoMM5 main menu has a realtime 3D melee combat which is dynamic and constantly cycles and looks fucking cool... but ingame, you get one guy stabbing the other guy in the same animation every time. If you've got 400 archers, they still only shoot one arrow, etc. Even if it was a toggle, or if there was some resolution to it (ie, stack shows 1 guy for every 20 or something) it'd look a million times better. In HoMM5 it's a great missed opportunity, and the main menu animation shows that they KNOW what people want.

Definately--and honestly, this would be beneficial to the strategy as well. As it stands right now, my Archer of the 400 is just one gigantic badass. The only reason to divide your stacks is if one group is overkill (or something), but if they were actually masses of individual men, instead of it being one guy who does 500 damage, it'd be 400 men who do between a miss and 0 to 1.25 damage. That'd look cool, but it's also a way better tactical game. Nobody needs to select an individual man, but selecting a mass of archers and giving them a move-and-attack order with a more Total War-y look and feel (even if it's still played on a big 'map' and turnbased) would just feel so much more accurate.

You could even put in a lot more strategy elements, like unit density, something I think is missing. A single unit clogs up a gatehouse, for example, but it can either be 10 of the weakest or 10 of the biggest. If units actually had a 'size' instead of just a toggle, you'd see an unknown amount of strategy come into play. Surrounding a unit is no longer a ridiculously stupid affair.

Maybe I just want the game to be something else that it isn't. But in a lot of ways, the gameplay is incredibly antiquated, and it doesn't just LOOK lousy, but it actually hurts how much thought you can put into it. Even the old "Masters of Magic" game that came out back in the day (look it up!) had a vastly superior combat model to modern HoMM games.

The problem for me isn't that it's like a chess-game though, but that it's like a chess game where I can put ALL my pawns into a single spot. The bad growth model makes it impossible to come back from a big defeat, the bad retreat model turns every battle into a Samurai Showdown, the bad movement model makes aggression (and ambush) far more effective than defense, and the retardedly simple combat model makes it inevitable that numerical superiority (in hero and army strength) matter far more than any other factor.

It's a fun game, but played competitively it's a recipe for frustration.

Oh, and the undead are fucking wank.

Just for what it's worth, I got into the HoMM games in the first place because I remembered Clouds of Xeen & Darkside of Xeen (World of Xeen), and even the third one, the Swords of Xeen - I loved those games. I'd still love to play them, but that's likely nostalgia talking.

In HoMM2, if you edited the map right, you can utterly break the game with Ghosts. Start yourself with even 5 Ghosts to a hero and nothing else - in a few turns, you'll be breaking off stacks of hundreds of Ghosts to other heroes on a sadistic rampage that none can stop. I'm glad they removed Ghosts in the subsequent games, because they really were broken (i.e. whenever a stack of creatures died to a ghosts, you'd instantly have that many more Ghosts in a stack. Yeah - broken).

When I get several other things in order in real life, I plan on getting HoMM5, as I've seen it played, and it looks sexy enough to be enjoyable. At least for a while.

But I still kinda miss World of Xeen.

I don't know...I really liked 1 and 3 (mostly 3). The thing about stacks is...what else would you do? Wouldn't it be kind of absurd to have a turn-based game where you can see every unit? It makes sense in a real-time setting, like Total War, but I don't see it in turn-based. And yeah, the story was kind of lame, but who cares? Did anyone actually play it for the story (kind of like Halo, in that respect)? I played it almost exclusively for the multiplayer (but that's just me). On a quick side-note, there was an option besides retreating. In 3 you could 'surrender', losing all your artifacts but keeping your army (if I remember how it worked correctly). There, I think that covers the things I can answer for .

No wait, I missed one. In 3 (again) you actually could leave static defenders on mines and such. Not terribly effective without a hero, but an option.

Oh, I know all about Masters of Magic. It's sad that Age of Wonders tried to be Masters of Magic and totally fucked it up, making a simplistic HoMM-MoM hybrid that sucked.

People - millions of them - play Halo for the story.

And I thought even in 3 the only way to leave guys at mines was the 'haunted mines' ability?

Good to hear you played MoM--that game was really excellent, and I still enjoy it. The combination of Wizards, Magic Schools, and Basic Infantry types makes for an unusally variable play experience--which would be exciting to see nowadays. If you like MoM, the game Dominions feels like almost a total ripoff, which is interesting.

NomAnor15 wrote:I don't know...I really liked 1 and 3 (mostly 3). The thing about stacks is...what else would you do? Wouldn't it be kind of absurd to have a turn-based game where you can see every unit?

I understand where you're coming from, but ask yourself, how valuable is a single archer? Or a single halebardier? At what point do archers, skeletons, footmen become useful enough that you care if you start losing them?

Cliffs note version of my post: You don't. We might as well spawn these guys as 'squads' rather than individuals, since the only types of units you'll ever see a lot of are worthless, and setting units up into squads has many advantages over stacks anyway.

To me, that cutoff point is about the double-digit range, and closer to 15 or 20 than 10. If I have a stack of about 100 archers, losing 5 of them is annoying but hardly alarming. Even in a crappy army you're likely to have near 200 of your lower ranked guys in a single stack--or broken up into 3 or 4 stacks--if you can afford it. I fucking hate the hard-limit on stacks. If I want my maximum army size, I'm artificially limited in the number of stacks (of whatever type) I can have? For fuck's sake...

Anyway, okay, let's asy you're these guys:



Not a bad little force, all in all. Not to the point where it's going to be a gamewinner, but you can certainly take on bigger creeps with this. Look at your stack sizes. 260 Potlid-wearing Peasents. 157 Armored Fundamentalists. 35 Priests of Boylove, 51 Deferred Chickenhawks and 17 Republican Champion Aspirants.

Oh, and also nearly 100 archers.

This is a fairly large army, but a great deal of these troops are utterly fuckworthless in small amounts. The Fundies are okay because of their huge defense, but the Peasents? Fuck, who cares? They're trash. Would you ever need to select a single unit, really, when you need about 80 of them to accomplish anything--and even still, half of them will die from counterattacks?

For a good idea how to do the 'group control' thing I was talking about, click this--note, this is more troops than in the above pic (612 vs 638), and it's way easier to control.

Now, turnbased? Turnbased is easy--it's just realtime without moving half of the time--basically the same tactics as laggy realtime. I'm a fan of Simultanous Turnbased stuff, myself. I'd rather that I give all my units orders at once and then see how it goes--but if that's not a good option, then how about this:

Let them hammer away at each other so it LOOKS like they're continually fighting, in the background, as you plan orders. Each time a turn comes up they do a little cinematic of an attack, where the camera pulls back and the archer commander goes "Fire!" and you actually do damage. Same as turnbased, but with actual coolness involved.

The problem is stacks are right at the core of HoMM's format, right down to the Ludicrously Limited Mapspace. There *are* reasons to split stacks (like to stop a supermonster killing all your Useless Infantry in one hit) but you *can't*, because you can only have seven stacks in battle due to hard limits. That means - you guessed it - no tactical flexibility. You couldn't make a stack a pre-built 100 archers, for instance, because then you could never really have more than 100 in your army as you'd need space for all the Actual Good units as well, and you only get seven.

I don't mind the fluid initiative system. However, giving the combat grid limitation and the stack limitation and the limitations imposed by the growth system, you really can't tweak that (and the problems it throws up) without completely rebuilding the game.

And I think MoM (aside from the worthless diplomacy and hopelessly ugly UI circa 1994) is still probably the best fantasy game I've played. Using squads, with per-figure bonuses (like a tabletop game), made combat awesome and allowed plenty of unit variation between races (ie, dark elf spearmen can shoot magic, lizardman spearman are amphibious, barbarian spearmen throw axes before charge, etc). You don't see that shit anymore, or you see it in Age of Wonders where it's boiled down to lameness. The Civ-lite city management was lame too, though.

Stark wrote:The problem is stacks are right at the core of HoMM's format, right down to the Ludicrously Limited Mapspace. There *are* reasons to split stacks (like to stop a supermonster killing all your Useless Infantry in one hit) but you *can't*, because you can only have seven stacks in battle due to hard limits. That means - you guessed it - no tactical flexibility. You couldn't make a stack a pre-built 100 archers, for instance, because then you could never really have more than 100 in your army as you'd need space for all the Actual Good units as well, and you only get seven.

Yeah, I hate that goddamn hardlimit on stacks. Why, for ___'s sake, don't we have a little leftright scrollbar? Honestly... why? Would it kill them to let us have 15 spots? Would it make the game less tactical?

I don't think we'd get any complainers if we changed that, though. Opening the game up to tactical and squad-based ingenuity would probably attract a lot of people to the coolness of how it looks, and why not just... well, 'square' the size of the map? Instead of having one battlegrid, let's have 9. You start in the middle one, and the other 8 are around you. That gives room to retreat, to flank, etc---as well as extra deployment room. I don't mind saying that you can fit 100 men into a 'square' if the 'total map' size is similar to a total war map. You could probably fit a million men in a map of that size (presuming the game wouldn't crash, which it would).

Stark wrote:I don't mind the fluid initiative system. However, giving the combat grid limitation and the stack limitation and the limitations imposed by the growth system, you really can't tweak that (and the problems it throws up) without completely rebuilding the game.

Fluid iniative is fine, I just hate "stand there and get the shit beat out of you" stationary graphics. I'd like if they hammered on each other (pointlessly) like in Dawn of War. Dawn of War melee, for example, deals a set amount of damage across the length of the little animated exchange of blows. There's no reason not to let my Zombies slap around some Peasents if they're in proximity, but we just reserve the 'damage dealing' graphics for when a turn rolls. The rest would just be a static animation that makes it look more like a war, and less like nerdchess.

Stark wrote:And I think MoM (aside from the worthless diplomacy and hopelessly ugly UI circa 1994) is still probably the best fantasy game I've played. Using squads, with per-figure bonuses (like a tabletop game), made combat awesome and allowed plenty of unit variation between races (ie, dark elf spearmen can shoot magic, lizardman spearman are amphibious, barbarian spearmen throw axes before charge, etc). You don't see that shit anymore, or you see it in Age of Wonders where it's boiled down to lameness. The Civ-lite city management was lame too, though.

Ahh, definately. Some things were way out of balance (like starting on Myrrir with one of the Myrrir races, you're nearly unopposed) but the game had a great idea and the fact that their extremely similar combat system worked way better (and was easier to use) is an example for how we could improve HoMM's setup.

The Civ management was kind shitty, yes, but at least I was allowed to do it. I'm so frustrated that in HoMM I'm unable to just build a fucking battlement to stop people from waltzing into my territory. I know it's part of the 'charm' of the Candyland lookin' maps they make, but the Romans could slap together a little wooden base within a day or so, wasn't it? Why can't my army of Minotaurs pile up some rocks to keep the enemy out? Lack of manual dexterity?

Given the choice between admittedly basic and lame citybuilding anywhere I goddamn please... and NO building of any sort anywhere anytime ever, for any reason... I think it's easy to say which decision lends itself towards better game design options. Besides, real cities are annoyingly hard to make. Ever played the modern Sim Cities? It's more like Sim Migrane.

Covenant wrote:

NomAnor15 wrote:I don't know...I really liked 1 and 3 (mostly 3). The thing about stacks is...what else would you do? Wouldn't it be kind of absurd to have a turn-based game where you can see every unit?

I understand where you're coming from, but ask yourself, how valuable is a single archer? Or a single halebardier? At what point do archers, skeletons, footmen become useful enough that you care if you start losing them?

Cliffs note version of my post: You don't. We might as well spawn these guys as 'squads' rather than individuals, since the only types of units you'll ever see a lot of are worthless, and setting units up into squads has many advantages over stacks anyway.

To me, that cutoff point is about the double-digit range, and closer to 15 or 20 than 10. If I have a stack of about 100 archers, losing 5 of them is annoying but hardly alarming. Even in a crappy army you're likely to have near 200 of your lower ranked guys in a single stack--or broken up into 3 or 4 stacks--if you can afford it. I fucking hate the hard-limit on stacks. If I want my maximum army size, I'm artificially limited in the number of stacks (of whatever type) I can have? For fuck's sake...

-snip-

Now, turnbased? Turnbased is easy--it's just realtime without moving half of the time--basically the same tactics as laggy realtime. I'm a fan of Simultanous Turnbased stuff, myself. I'd rather that I give all my units orders at once and then see how it goes--but if that's not a good option, then how about this:

Let them hammer away at each other so it LOOKS like they're continually fighting, in the background, as you plan orders. Each time a turn comes up they do a little cinematic of an attack, where the camera pulls back and the archer commander goes "Fire!" and you actually do damage. Same as turnbased, but with actual coolness involved.

I see what you mean. I don't know though, I still think that it was a really fun game, even if the mechanics could have been better executed.

NomAnor15 wrote:I see what you mean. I don't know though, I still think that it was a really fun game, even if the mechanics could have been better executed.

Oh! I think it's fun too! I'm usually enjoying a game at the same time as I'm cursing it into a flaming wreck. Bad movies, bad games, bad food... can all be really enjoyable.

It's a fallacy of these modern times that you have to hate something to criticize it, even to criticize it stridently. Just because I enjoy the game doesn't mean I agree with it's decisions, and even if I enjoy the game doesn't mean they've done everything right.

I would have no problems giving a movie or a game one or two stars, for being a shitty movie, but recommending it to everyone on the basis that it's an awesome popcorn-muncher flick or a good afternoon diversion of a game. There's objective criticism and subjective enjoyment, and these things operate (or should) on seperate rails.