Coming in hot! Just re-released my mod, largely overhauled to balance AoW+ for LAN metagame, and with by far the most detailed and easy to read documentation it's had to date (basically game manual format unit/spell tables as well as quick summary). What a great base for a ruleset AoW+ 1.43 has been! Regardless of whatever changes happen moving forward, I am now forever content with 1.43.127, so will likely keep whatever reservations I have about future changes to myself in favour of trying And G's vision for the game as its own separate thing. I'll definitely play to completion your campaign once released! But will likely be playing 1.43.127 indefinitely for LAN games and couldn't be happier for it!

Well, isn't this exactly what I like to hear! Though there will be a new version soon that will improve some minor things.

Remember how I talked about a 'final update' like 10 pages ago? Well, v1.44 is shaping up to be that (provisionally) final version, at least until v1.50. Shipyard income, raze defenders and other major changes will have to wait until then.

What v1.44 will include is the following:
- some minor improvements to relations/diplomacy
- level-independent hero upkeep
- FM/WW castable on machines again, but more expensive

I'd like to hear opinions regarding the following topics:

1. What would be an appropriate upkeep for heroes? Consider that upkeep for transferred heroes has the potential to be a major money drain in the campaign, and that multiplayer is largely balanced by players having the same number of heroes, so there's little reason to balance hero upkeep vs unit upkeep. Also they're called heroes, not mercenaries. (Though I could change that in v1.50.)

2. Migrating and looting give a bonus to relations when cancelled on a later turn. This is especially relevant for when a player captures a city and cancels ongoing migration/looting. So it is essentially a bonus for liberating the city. Currently, the bonus when migrating is 20 points which is equivalent to one status shift, and it will definitely stay that way; what I am unsure about is the bonus for looting which is going to be either 20 or 40. Preferences?

3. I am quite surprised that I have not heard a single complaint about the increased production times for L1 and L2 cities. No demands to revert this?

4. Azracs are currently somewhat disadvantaged by their default relations which are Wary or worse with all non-Neutral races. If anyone has any suggestions on how to improve this, I'm all ears.

5. Any other (minor!) tweaks that would be needed for a better multiplayer experience?

Could this include reverting the current situation where it's possible to recruit same-race cities for free? Either by reducing same-race relations or having a cost (doesn't need to be full cost) to recruit even at Friendly relations.

This free recruitment screws with the balance of some maps that were made under the understanding you wouldn't be able to recruit cities for free, and introduces the absurd tactic of letting an insufficient enemy force take your own cities so that you can recruit the resulting rebels for free.

I don't think it matters too much what upkeep heroes have, as long as it's not huge.
But, level-scaling made sense in terms of gameplay and balance - a more powerful unit costs more to have. I guess it annoys you for thematic reasons. Personally I was used to gold-hungry heroes from Master of Magic, a predecessor game where heroes have more of a mercenary tinge.

On the other hand, I like that they don't demand gold upfront any more, because my RTS habits always made me spend all my gold, and I don't know if there's any way to tell what the hero arrival chance is, should you stockpile gold.

Very nice! So you can make certain enchantments cost more on certain targets? Could have other applications.

I prefer 20, I don't think the rescuer really 'deserves' 40.

I like it for hamlets, for villages I am not so keen, but it's okay. Could villages be made cheaper/quicker to upgrade, like in Warlock's mod? And Cities more expensive/slower to upgrade?
Villages (2-hexers) have always felt a bit wimpy to me,

Off the top of my head, I can't remember why they couldn't be Neutral to Goblinms, Dwarves, Halflings, or Dark Elves, but I don't know the lore that well.

I wouldn't use AoW+ for multiplayer, I hope you make a multiplayer version. Hero development should ideally be way more rapid in a multiplayer match of 1 map, as compared to along an entire singleplayer campaign of ... is it a dozen scenarios? Then there's rebuilders and same-race city recruitment but I've whined enough about those.

Multiplayer doesn't necessarily mean PBEM. Since AoW+ slows down the overall pace of the game even without considering heroes, people who prefer short PBEM games won't play AoW+ anyway, so I see no need to cater to them.

I was considering alternative matrices where most races have only Polite self-relations. However, even in that case certain races would need to have Friendly self-relations, especially Undead and Highmen but possibly also Dark Elves, Azracs, and Dwarves. And if Polite is the new standard, then what about Humans? Should they be Neutral with themselves, but Polite with Highmen?

AoW+ already changes the economy in a number of ways that make certain maps ill-balanced for AoW+, and quite frankly I'm not willing to make major changes to diplomcay now just so that a small portion of them will be somewhat more playable. With the amount of changes AoW+ makes to the game rules it was always an impossibility to retain full playability of all maps.

No, they're just more expensive in general. I never liked terrain-defeating spells much anyway.

I am inclined to agree.

I didn't want to do this earlier, but with the changed production times I suppose this now deserves serious consideration. 50-75-100 or 50-100-150 would seem appropriate to me.

Azracs live in a theocratic and supremacist society and "disdain the concepts of good and evil". I suppose this could also be taken to mean that they don't care about the alignment of other races at all, but if Azracs are Neutral towards most races then they're too similar to Humans and not xenophobic enough.

Are you willing to sacrifice the option to build new shipyards for it?

going to T4 is already expensive and time consuming. Making T4 feels like salt to the insult when you already winning. Even if the T4 are indeed powerful units.

increasing gold cost for t4 city upgrade to 150, doesn't seems like a step in direction that make T4 more often to use.

so i would opt for 50-75-100. The major factor is time needed for upgrade. And cheaper lower upgrade allow faster access to tier 2, when game is early and there is not too much $.

Yes.

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Im consufed by this question. Maybe my knowlege of AoW1 is not soo great. But I never ever build shipyard. There is plenty of them on every water map.

In vanilla i just dont want to focus on taking rare builder guild, building builder (crane), finding convenient sea shore (usually nearby is map placed Shipyard), building the shed (money well spend :/) , then installing ships, paying 200 gold for single boat and waiting 8 turn for it to produce.

And then you have your single boat that can do nothing, because AI is ruling the sea with Dragon Ships.

but Im happy to hear how OP and tactically rich is to build your bespoke Shipyard.

I think so too.

Yep, like I said earlier, maps that need Shipyards already have them. So losing the ability to build new ones really isn't a big deal. In fact the game might be better for it since it removes another advantage human players have over the AI.

The question is not whether Shipyards will eventually have income; the question is whether they will already have income in v1.4x or only starting with v1.50. I was planning on adding this feature with v1.50 since that would also allow me to make changes to in-game texts and hence list Shipyards as a separate source of income in the ledger, but if there's a consensus that Shipyard income is super duper cool then of course I can add it earlier, with the aforementioned drawback that income of Builders Guilds and Shipyards is combined in the ledger and called "Producing" or somesuch.

Here its only ~5 guys posting.
to be able to have any consensus you would have to ask for opinion about 100 players.
I doubt there is total 100 players worldwide that still playing AoW1.

and even though you still make changes that do not have our approval :D

So i think, we cannot use statistics as a measure.

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but my voice in particular represent 58 people, who are playing AoW1 in my home, in one big Lan party every day, so yes, we all behind my screen agree that new location to capture and fight for, would greatly enhance the pleasure from playing AoW1.

Choosing where to build new Towers, roads and Shipyards would be cool in my book, but maybe I just spent more time playing the Civilisation series. Anyway, in AoW+ where they'll have income, how practical is it to rename things? With gold income, they might deserve to be called ''Ports'' instead.

I think AoW could have 1000 intermittent players; the max playing at any one time via Steam these days is 35, and one of the maps uploaded to heavegames this year has 230 downloads.

Shipyard income:
As mentioned, most maps already have shipyards where necessary and I do think it'd be cool if they were called Ports and generated income. While I do like being able to build roads and towers (and wouldn't want to see that eliminated even if it's rarely used), building shipyards in multiplayer meta was only useful for building a secret FM/WW Galleon somewhere hidden, which leads into..

FM/WW machines / general:
I'm so glad to see these eliminated from the game, and not just because of realism, though that's a pretty good reason on its own. What I actually like most about it is how much more diversity it allows ships to have. I'm experimenting with ships having a Strike ability to represent close range skirmishes/boarding, and I guess ramming lol. Ship battles have always sucked and it's making them alot more interesting, whereas FM/WW made Strike ridiculous. Either way, FM/WW ships are not missed by me. I'm hoping any change to FM/WW cost would only be applied if default values are left unchanged, but assume it'd be a hard coded multiplier like Animate Ruins. I think such a multiplier would be alot more restrictive on unit enchantments as compared to a now consensus OP global spell, which I don't mind at all.

Raze defenders:
I wouldn't want to see this removed. Maybe a new unit GFX that's essentially a Human wearing all brown, make it a new weaker infantry and call it Commoner or Worker or something? Could be interpreted as slaves for evil races maybe? Just brainstorming ideas, I'm fine with how it is currently. I do think default Humans make sense for Builder's Guilds especially though.

Hero upkeep:
I can't think of anything better than what it is now, at half of 1.36 values. I like it.

Looting bonus:
Agree with 20.

Production time:
I like it, slowing down low tier production makes reduced gold income less painful in the early game, while allowing reduced gold income to make late game productions feel really valuable.

Upgrade time:
I like the idea of scaled upgrade times, and would agree with 50-75-100, or what about 50-100-150? I really like 50 for the low end, and I kind of like 150 for level 4. Makes it feel more significant than upgrading the nearby village.

Azrac diplomacy:
I don't mind it how it is now at all. I think maintaining sensible and distinct relations for the Humans is more important. If I remember correctly, didn't the Azracs try to conquer the world once or twice? But then used the Horn of the Dead as some kind of deterrent against retaliation by the other races when they failed? Something like that, I think.

Summon Mermaid:
Random thought, but could 'Summon Mermaid' be renamed to 'Summon Serpent' since they would have the same amount of characters?

@ And G

I like the increased the increased production times for L1 hamlets....maybe Villages could have the changes that Southern suggested?

To help Azracs, perhaps give them and Lizards a race relation increase....since lore-wise, they NEVER compete for the same territory!

As for your 'any tweaks that would be needed for a better multiplayer experience' question:

-Leadership giving a +1ATT, +1DEF, +1RES to whole stack WITH the ability cost set to 20. I have always wanted to have General/Leader type Leaders/Heros as an RPG option!

-Shipyard income + I'm fine with losing the ability to make new shipyards.....call them 'Ports' (as per Southern) now, maybe?

for shipyards : why do we need to chose: income or self build ?

Because I consider these two features mutually exclusive.

I don't quite understand what you mean by this. My intention is to set FM cost to 24 and upkeep to 8, and set WW upkeep to 16. Together with the reduced availability of mana (and the single-shot Shoot Javelin) this would hopefully make FM/WW ships sufficiently weak to not be considered OP. The changes to cost and upkeep would be implemented as conditional overrides, just like with Stone Skin, so if you use an HSS where any of those values are different then they would remain unaffected by AoW+.

-

Since there have been a number of suggestions recently that are quite clearly aimed at AoW+ v1.5x rather than v1.4x, I want to reiterate the differences between the versions here so that everyone is up to speed:

AoW+ v1.4x:
- Will receive one or two updates soon-ish and then be a finished product.
- Will not make any changes to resource files (apart from the campaign).
- Will retain full language support (apart from the campaign).
- Will not alter any in-game texts unless appropriate strings are available.
- Will not contradict any unaltered in-game texts.
- Will remain fully compatible with HSS mods.

AoW+ v1.5x:
- Will come with its own HSS and therefore be incompatible with HSS mods.
- Will alter in-game texts and therefore be English-language only.
- Will make changes to graphics.
- Will hopefully be based on the MM version and come with an editor.
- Will have its first release some time next year, maybe.

None of these points are in any way negotiable, and I'm not looking for suggestions for 1.5x right now. My concern at the moment is to implement some final minor improvements and that's it.

As I have said earlier, if you guys can all agree on certain features then I can build a customised AoW+ version to your liking. All features would need to be tweaks of features that already exist in any previous AoW+ versions, e.g. more skill points for heroes per level. (Shipyard income is a special case since I already know how to implement it.) Also I won't care about contradicting in-game texts, so having Leadership improve DEF is an option.

However, I will only build one such customised AoW+ version, and that version will not receive any support of any kind, ever. This means that I will not retroactively implement any improvements from future AoW+ versions, even should I ever figure out how to change movement cost for Tunnelling.

Sorry to post a 1.5 suggestion right after you said you weren't looking for them at present, but I'll forget if I don't post it now - can abilities be renamed?

If so, you could rename 'Dragon Slaying' and 'Dragon' to a new pair of names, and use them for different concepts.
With ''Monster Slaying'' and ''Monster'', you'd have a similar concept, but it would be seen in more of the game, not just with the rarely-seen dragons. Then some ''little hero warrior'' type units could be given Monster Slaying, so you could see Avengers defeating monsters but being less remarkable against other humanoid troops for example.

Or you could rename it to ''Assassin'' and ''Assassin's Mark'', if heroes all had Assassin's Mark then you could give units like the Rogue, Orc Assassin (duh) the renamed ability, and they would be specifically strong against heroes. You get the idea.

That is actually something I already head in mind for my campaign but targeted at the Undead. I do however like both your ideas of Monster Slaying and Hero Slaying and will definitely keep them in mind for v1.5x.

Anyway, v1.44 is here. This time there is no need to remove any files from v1.43 and campaign savegames can be continued. It's really a fairly minor update which is why you even get a changelog:
- Relations are now correctly limited to between 0 and 100.
- The Loot cancel bug is fixed.
- Loot and Raze permanently set relations to 0.
- Effects of diplomatic actions now depend on relation status rather than relation value.
- Effects of diplomatic actions are reduced for races Wary/Hostile towards the target player, which means that it's not as easy to improve relations with other races by declaring war e.g. on the Undead.
- Smaller cities are cheaper to upgrade.
- Shipyards now generate income but can no longer be built.
- Free Movement and Wind Walking can be cast on machines again but are more expensive.
- Builders are cheaper.