Minor tweaks I would like to see-

-Rebuild City brought down to reasonable price and duration, at present this has been effectively removed from the game
-City Migration made 2 turns faster
-Neutral-relations city recruitment cheaper, at present it's so expensive it might as well not be an option

It would be great if you could evenetually release notes on the technical details of the hex editing - with such notes, it should be a lot easier for someone else to make their own edits?

Your AoW+ has a distinct style to it - gritty, realistic. Less income, less levelup points, no HP gain, slower migration, higher upkeep for high-tiers, and so on. I'd be interested in making something with the opposite style, more 'high fantasy, everyone is a hero'

Also, 8/5 ballista is a bit wimpy, compared to the cheaper, more broadly useful priest which has a 7/3 attack
8/6?
Oh, and +2ATK to all the touch attacks, like Turn Undead, Charm, Invoke Death etc would be nice. Or just +1ATK in some cases.

Hi And G...thank you for explaining how unit experience works now. I mostly understood after paying close attention, but you've cleared up the issue fully.

I really like how a Lvl4 unit killing a lvl1 unit won't even give exp now....just like how stomping on ants doesn't make someone a better fighter!

I also like how silver stars now act as an artificial 'extra level' for whatever unit possesses them...making it harder for them to level up afterwards! I guess the units killing silver star units don't get extra level based xp, do they?


*I am really enjoying the increased difficulty of the campaign! Right now, the story line and mission goals (of a small desperate force lead by your Leader using skill to accomplish mission goals in the face of overwhelming odds) is VERY TRUE to Lore!


BRILLIANT!!!

Thanks And G for the insights, I didn't catch all of those details during my playtesting, very cool.
Minor tweaks I would like to see:

- Rebuild city price and duration very significant decrease. It really is way too much.

- Migration duration slight decrease (or an increased radius for what is considered nearby)

- Neutral City Buying Cost: medium decrease, I like what you're going for with this but currently players can't really make use of it and the high cost does not deter AI at all (if that was a consideration).

- Burning status effect: Is there any way to increase the chance of fire-based attacks causing the Burning status effect? Can the status effect be given increased ATK/DMG? What if it had much stronger ATK/DMG but a shorter duration? Currently, this status effect is a non-factor, and Fire magic suffers greatly for it.

- Similarly, can Ignition be made to have a higher probability of igniting hexes?

Thoughts on other potential tweaks:

- Gold income is currently a great base for a ruleset, please don't change it

- Mana income:
Much like gold income, spell research/casting costs can be scaled to make nearly any value playable, so as long as the concept of exponentially growing mana income remains I'm on board. HOWEVER I think 1-5-10-15 may have a 'good ratio' so to speak, but in practice I think '1' is just too low as a baseline, even with scaled spell costs. From a starting point of 5 (which I really like for elemental/generic/spellcasting), what about:
- 5-10- 20-40 (4+3 grants 60, 4+2+1 grants 55, 3+3+1 grants 50, 3+2+2 grants 40)

I really think 4 spheres should grant significant income - 15 is not enough to choose a lore appropriate sphere and hold a position, especially if there is only one elemental node of that type on the map, compared to two or more nodes of any other given sphere (as is often the case on many maps). I didn't think 50 was too much, and still prefer 5-10-25-50, but I think 5-10-20-40 is probably the best compromise.

I don't think a starting point of 1 mana income is really playable, and seems unnecessarily limiting for making a ruleset, given spell costs can be altered to the same effect.

- I have mixed feelings about improving Shoot Javelin. I think the added range compared to Mages, along with no HP increases to level 1 units (maintains one-shot kill potential indefinitely), makes Ballistas still very relevant. I would be okay with 8/6 but I don't think it's necessary - I mostly just like that it no longer has one-shot kill potential on horsemen for balance reasons (which granted would apply to 8/6 also).

- I would be curious to check out what changes you would think are appropriate to ATK values of touch attacks. I could see a buff to Seduce ATK as it is so largely limited on who can use it, and on what. Maybe it should have higher ATK than Charm, which could instead become the weaker, general use variant at its current value. I wouldn't change Dominate though. I've always found Turn Undead somewhat underwhelming.

Ah, you wish to hear our 'last minute pleas for leniency', huh? Alright, here is my best attempt at pleading!

*If I don't mention something, it's because I like what you've done already!

MAJOR 'wish-list' stuff (with pleading):

1) I BESEECH THEE, please keep the current 5-10-25-50 mana income for nodes...as it is, it encourages sphere mastery! Plus, it also encourages an additional mission goal(s) during both campaign AND multiplayer (capture and holding CRITICAL mana nodes)! I also find the exponential growth to be true to lore.

2) .....Wow, I can't think of any other big concerns....seems I agree/approve/like/enjoy most of what you've done (and are looking to do)!

MINOR wish list stuff (without the pleading this time!):

1) Units that kill silver star units get 1 extra xp point towards their total earned xp (if not already implemented)

2) Units that kill gold star units get 2 extra xp points towards their total earned xp (if not already implemented)

3) As per 'IniochReborn', making Fire Strike somewhat more useful would be good! Right now, Death/Poison/Holy/Lightning/Entangle/Cold Strike are all good (some are freaking awesome!), but Fire Strike is a sad joke! Maybe make the burning effect more likely to occur, and give each round of burning effect a higher chance (10%?) of damaging the afflicted unit.

4) As per 'IniochReborn', making Ignition have a much higher chance of igniting hexes = would be a good thing!

5) A slight decrease in the cost/time it takes to rebuild destroyed structures/cities would be good...but at the same time, I can see what you were going for and I agree that your changes better fit lore.....I guess I am happy either way here!

6) A slight increase to turn undead chance of hitting (+10%).....too bad the AI almost never uses it in auto-combat against undead though. Maybe there is a way to increase the likelyhood the AI uses this ability? ....wait, probably raising the 'chance to hit' by 10% WOULD be enough to get the AI to use it!

7) as per 'IniochReborn', making Seduce slightly more likely to hit (while keeping it's inability to work on many enemy units), would be a good idea. Charm should stay where it is though (it is meant to be used against low level units).

Last Minute Questions/Comments:

1) Am I to understand that the asymmetrical race relations won't be implemented in the final version of AOW+? Does this mean that it will be included in your latter HSS mod?

2) Souther suggested that Ballistas get an increase to their javillin DAM because priests are nearly as powerful + have extra abilities.......however, the Ballista gets 2 free shots off in auto-combat (1 if enemy cavalry are present) + has a 4 hex longer range + has no morale = Ballista has its own advantages over priests. I suggest keeping the ballista as is.

After further consideration, please disregard my earlier suggestion concerning seduce/charm.

Seduce is inherent to lvl1 units Nymph and Lady of Pain....while Charm is usually a lvl2-3 unit ability. Seduce should stay exactly as is.

IF ANYTHING, it is Charm that should be given a +1 (+10%) chance of the attack hitting.

So include in my 'last minute change request' that Charm be made to have a +1 (+10%) chance of the touch attack connecting!

Actually, maybe migration time isn't so bad as it is, and people should just loot a lot of the time? Not sure. Does have a sort of ''syrian civil war'' feel when the armies feel slightly superificial and the 'civilian' population exerts military strength just by occupying a hex. It's interesting.

By the way, something I've noticed on my testing map (aka grass patch):

A level 1 Hero (Conan McHarr) has 25 skill points assigned (at an AoW+ cost of 35 due to added DEF), upon first level up receives 5 skill points.

A level 2 Hero (specifically Khabar Eagle Eye) has 35 skill points assigned, at an AoW+ modded cost of 55 (added MP and DEF). He spawns with 16/20 xp, allowing a quicker level up, at which point he receives 5 skill points.

A level 3 Hero (Jacob the Noble) spawns with 45 points assigned (40 cost in AoW+, due to Spellcasting). Yet he spawns as a level 4 and upon level up, still has -5 skill points.

A level 6 Hero (Danto Dragonslayer) has 75 skill points assigned (at a cost of 75 in AoW+ as well, as his single added DEF negates the cost reduction of his Spellcasting. Yet he spawns as a level 8 with 76 out of 80 xp for a quick level up as well, at which point he receives 15 skill points.

Most strangely was Roderick Nightrunner, a level 4 Hero with 55 points assigned (cost of 65 in AoW+). Upon beginning the game. he immediately levelled up to level 5, had -24 skill points, and was reduced to 1 out of 10 HP.

Anyways, just thought I'd bring it up but I have no complaints. Given Hero join offers are now free, I intend to lower Hero max start levels anyways, as I assume a player having no gold will no longer prevent join offers from the strongest Heroes?

**Just did a few more tests before posting as I wanted to see if Level 2 Heroes would still be stable with Spellcasting (which Khabar didn't have)**

- Spawning Khabar with Spellcasting and remainder of skill points assigned (but not to DEF nor MP).... exact same result as before (no extra 5 from Spellcasting reduction)

- Spawning Khabar with Spellcasting and + 5MP, +1 DEF (total cost in DevEd 35, cost in AoW+ is 50) .... exact same result

- Spawning Khabar as level 3 with Spellcsating, + 5MP and +2 DEF (total cost in DevEd 45, cost in AoW+ 70) ... he spawns as level 4 with 31 out of 40 xp, and upon level-up has -35 skill points

- Spawning Khabar as level 3 with Spellcasting II and +1 ATK (DevEd cost 45, AoW+ cost 35) .... spawns as level 4 and receives 0 skill points upon first level up

Okay, I'm gonna stop here and tentatively say that Level 1/2 Heroes are fully stable to edit to your liking for a ruleset... level 3 and up introduces some weird stuff. This suits me fine though, I wouldn't need a bug fix, but AoW 1.36 should be interesting lol.

-----------------------------------------------
1. production time

shipyard and builder guild (as city 1 size equivalent) are producing machines of level 1,2,3,4 with 2,4,6,8 turn.
this limit design space to adjust unit cost, maintenance cost / level, in the future. Everything has to be level 1 or 2, or it take forever to produce.

compare it to city size 4, which build tier 4 unit in just 3 turn. ( IMO tier 4 unit are produce too fast, even taken into account rarity of city size 4)

something wrong here, but I dont feel I can give proper solution

==========================

2. spells like Stone skin could be balanced by scarcity of Mana for Upkeep. (movement change is cool, but its a dream only)

------------------

3. Elemental Node progression 5-10-25-50.

+50 mana from single source is wrong. It completely break the nice ambient of slow mana income. I struggle with mana like with gold, until I find my Elemental Node, then Im like "ok lets forget about mana problems".

to visualize on the map you have to control so much normal node points x to have equal income of single Elemental Node Y

x x x
x x x x == Y
x x x

i think you are too much fixated on this 4 sphere benefit.

the downside is also that mana upkeep would lose on importance, because you could always afford it. Spell like Stone Skin would lose the potential very good balancing factor.

also:

1-5-10-15 node what a wonderful solution. A negative balance. And G you are genius.
taking just 1 sphere is less valid. As it should be IMO.

hmm.... how about 2-5-10-20 ?
2 points is something. and 20 is still a lot.

----
Leader power generation at low level 1 mana is wrong.

think about it, if you have very poor mana situation you are screw, with no hope to rebuild. Contrary to power creep at late game (so the mana matter even less for you).
it should be opposite, to allow weaker to have a chance to catch up.

not sure but what about - Leader power:
8-10-12-14-16

if your Leader live so long, you 90% has already 10x mana nodes as well.
----------------

4. Gold income
its too low

but i didn't take into account the rule set could just make the troops cheaper.

then 1 gold from crops is ok. and 5 from mine is balanced

you are right here IniochReborn. All can be adjusted with unit cost. And maintenance cost is good now.

-------------------

5. rebuilding

yes its not valid, now. It diminish the importance of builder unit. For what I would want the crane now? roads?
[other thing, lower FoV == tower construction start being interesting]

-------------------

6. migration

current time is good.

in AoW1 always annoy me that i can just migrate hostile cities. Being forced to raze them instead is great !
and current migration is beneficial for racial relation improvement.

Its also a thing, that some cities should be not available for every player. It add nice feeling, that races have his own conscious.

you want to trade it for even more income & spawn points?

--------------------

7. neutral city bribery cost is too high

its just is. Its not a choice. You always have to fight. You wanna pay 200 gold (or more)? Why not already click "Exit to Title".

-------------------

8. wandering monster cost is too high

Neutral units demand 80 gold? its cheaper to build you again. Plus you bastards probably betray me in very next turn (otherwise you would join for free).

--------------------
9. Seduce / charm.

I feel that seduce is too weak. Its effort to create unit specially for this purpose (installation, cost, maintenance, instead of other fighting unit). Nymph vs troops with 1 Res (lowest possible) the conversion chance is poor (this 2 swordsman i could just make in any city size 1). Also ladies dying fast, swordsmen are not gentlemen and they hit girl in return if they are not interested (why they dont hit back freaking archers?!).

------
10. Burn effect is weak. Agree some more damage from it would be good

---------
Why do you put such a harsh deadline on suggestions? Hope you be still open for some beneficial modification.
I will play some games this weekend.

I especially agree with this. It's worth noting that AoW+ has 1-turn installations, so it already makes this problem less serious, but it could be nice if they were able to train Tier 1/2/3/4 in 1/2/3/4 turns. Or 2/3/4/5?

OK so I probably should not have said 'final update'. Sorry for the confusion; I will try to explain what I meant by that.

AoW+ is currently on version 1.41. If I decide to go the HSS mod route (and I probably will) then I'll first release v1.42, which will hopefully be an improvement over v1.41 but won't deviate much from the established mechanics. Barring the discovery of any major bugs, version 1.42 will then remain the last version for quite some time while I work on the HSS mod.

At some unspecified time in the future I will release version 1.50, which will include its own HSS as well as further modifications to the engine, and continue working on that. So there's no reason to get feature requests in right now if you're chiefly interested in the eventual end product. However, v1.42 is supposed to be a finished product of sorts, so I want to make sure it is in a fully playable state before I begin working on v1.50.

Mana generation is one thing that I feel should be permanently resolved with v1.42, and I will also take another look at leader/hero skill points which don't seem to be working exactly the way they should. Apart from those two issues, most stuff that has been mentioned here seems to be more appropriate for v1.50 than v1.42.

If you wrote something that I haven't addressed yet I'll probably get to it within the next couple of days; remind me if I don't. First though I want to address this here:
There aren't all that many instances of simple byte edits; most of what I do involves rewriting routines. For that you need a disassembler and some knowledge of assembly. However, there is a data section in AoWEPACK that contains some tables. Here's a list of offsets with effective data sizes and labels:
0x558E8294 0x34 AoWE.RaceColors
0x558E8330 0x07 AoWE.StormDamageType
0x558E8338 0x32 AoWE.Player2GroupBehaviorTable
0x558E836C 0x28 AoWE.IndependentGroupBehaviorTable
0x558E8394 0x30 AoWE.RaceTerrain
0x558E83C4 0x03 AoWE.DefenseRankProgression
0x558E83C8 0x03 AoWE.AttackRankProgression
0x558E83CC 0x03 AoWE.DamageRankProgression
0x558E83D0 0x03 AoWE.ResistanceRankProgression
0x558E83D4 0x03 AoWE.HitsRankProgression
0x558E83D8 0x05 AoWE.MoraleResistanceModifier
0x558E83E0 0x05 AoWE.MoraleDefenseModifier
0x558E83E8 0x01 AoWE.LeadershipAttackProgression
0x558E83EC 0x01 AoWE.LeadershipDefenseProgression
0x558E83F0 0x90 AoWE.DefaultRaceRelations
0x558E8480 0x31 AoWE.dAlignmentToStatusValue
0x558E84B4 0x30 AoWE.HeroExperienceTable
0x558E8DE0 0x04 City.CityUpgradeCost
0x558E8DE4 0x04 City.CityUpgradeStoneWallCost
0x558E8DE8 0x04 City.CityUpgradeWoodenWallCost
0x559E8E3C 0x14 City.JoinAmount

As you can see the labels are quite descriptive. Note that if you play around with city upgrade costs you should probably also update the following dwords in related AI routines:
0x557AE9C0 City.TCityAIPA.UpgradeCity
0x557AEA73 City.TCityAIPA.ValidateUpgradeBudget
0x557AED3B City.TCityAIPA.ValidateFortifyBudget

All offsets are virtual; you need to subtract 0x55701200 from data offsets and 0x55700C00 from code offsets to get the actual file offsets.

Throughout the code section there are lots of other operand dwords and bytes that can be edited as data. Maybe at some point in the future I'll go through my batch files and list the ones I've experimented with, but this is not a priority for me right now. If there's anything in particular you want to mess about with you should familiarise yourself with a disassembler (I use PE Explorer, which looks like this) and just poke around AoWEPACK.

Thanks!

Thank you!

*I personally like the 2-4-6-8 time for shipyards.....a lvl4 ship is roughly 4 times more capable than a lvl1, but you have to also wait 4x as long to produce it! I think this already works well!

Yes, gold is not an issue.

I think I've figured out what's causing the hero weirdness: Heroes are saved not only with their level but also with their XP, and for this AoWEd uses the formula in AoWEPACK. So an L4 hero is given (4-1) * 15 = 45 XP. Then when you play the scenario in AoW+, those 45 XP immediately bump the hero to L5 since AoW+ uses a different XP progression. I have no idea how the HP reduction fits into this but it has to be related somehow. The good news is that the HP reduction doesn't happen when a hero emerges during the game.

Edit: I played around with this some more and it seems the only realistic solution is to restore the 15 XP per level at least for the lower levels, possibly coupled with a 2 XP per day increase instead of 1, which would also effectively reduce the bonus AI players get to daily leader/hero XP.