It is my favourite as well, along with pure mage. Anyone got other good builds?

I love the archer that becomes a ring leader. So bowman/commander. Has great map movement speed and units get an extra movement point. Large army and the ringleader can do nice damage and cast some spells. I also like the commander that just stays with the commanding skills till lvl 30. His large army is unstoppable.

What is a strategist again? What two classes combined?

Strategist starts as commander and then becomes tactician, Archer path I think, the third choice. It is totally awesome because non magic ranged units get +2 range attack and +4 at level 20. Add to that Elf or Dwarf alliance and ,you can shoot down everything the first round.

Did anybody notice that Siege Mode cancels the effect of shooting from the high ground? I'm not sure if this is something new or I just overlooked this.
When your shooting unit is on hills its range is increased by +1, but the description of the Siege Mode say that range cannot be larger than 3. So the Dwarven Pavissier placed on the hill with Siege Mode activated have the range of 3. But if human Sniper (T 1.5 level of Crosbowman) will use Siege Mode its range would be in fact lowered from 4 (5 on the hills) to 3? Or is the Siege Mode still available to units other than Dwarven Pavissier?
BTW, I lack the words to praise this mod. This is really something incredible. Excellent work!

If anyone is interested, I'e got an answer form NH folks on Drunken Dragon forum:

http://eador.com/B2/viewtopic.php?p=266698#266698

All of them (Siege Modes) are quite different, and only the Dwarven Pavisier has set range.
170. Siege Mode itself.
171. Siege Mode increases (or decreases) ranged damage by Power, if Power>1000 damage is instead set to Power.
172. Siege Mode increases (or decreases) range by Power, if Power>1000 range is instead set to Power.
173. Siege Mode grants Explosive Weapon ability (splash damage).
174. Siege Mode grants Chain lightning ability.
175. Siege Mode increases (or decreases) ranged damage by Power*10%.

My initial reaction - Sweet Jeeeesus, they even diffentiated Siege Mode functionalities for different units...
Awsome!

Hi guys,

Boon is considering to patch then next NH release with a predefined starting skill for each class.

Should heroes have one fixed starting skill for each class e.g. Scouts always start with skill "Marksmenship" - or do you prefer getting a random skill?

Which starting skill do you consider the "best" starting skill for each class?

Edit: BTW, 2.60b is up http://eador.com/B2/viewtopic.php?p=267632#267632

Anything that adds more choices is a plus in my book. For the scout I would go diplomacy early on so I could snatch up land farther away.

It's an interesting question. My first reaction was to be against changing this, but as I've thought more about it, I can see the logic. If it were set up with a fixed starting skill I didn't like I would just change it, but I'm the kind of person who has no qualms about tweaking things to my liking. It might be different for others.

For Scout I would say Diplomacy is the one I go for first, usually.
For Commander I would probably say Leadership (I think that's that's what it's called). The one that gives an XP bonus.
For Mage I would probably say the one with the scrolls icon (Scholarship?), because it also has an XP bonus.
For Warrior, either the crossed swords or the crossed axes.

Interestingly, none of the hero types has a single must-have-first skill. Not for me, anyway. In fact, I really only have a problem with random skill in two instances. The first, and the worst, is if I'm making a "good" wizard and I get Necromancy as the level 10 choice. That's just a waste, and it's always annoying. It's one of the few skills that only help certain types of heroes - necromancer wizards. At least a level 30 archmage can still max out all other skills if he only takes one level of Necromancy.

The second instance, which is still annoying but not quite as bad, is when I get Smithing on a character at level 10, and I don't want it. It's not that Smithing is a horrible skill, but when you first multi-class a hero, you can only choose a limited number of skills until you hit level 20. If I make an Adventurer (Scout -> Warrior), which I often do, I usually don't want Smithing. Smithing at least has some value, though, even if it wouldn't be my first choice.

Yeah the level 10 thing can be very annoying!

Anyone know how hard it would be to change the loot tables of New Horizons back to the ones of Genesis? It is starting to annoy me that all but the special sites (like Lich or Conclave) give only the standard 350 gold and a medium-good item. Even if you defeat an army that has Vampires or the Devil you still get crap. I mean the loot at the end, not the spoils, those are good.

You would need to check item.var and decrease item rarity for powerful items,

Ok easy enough with notepads replace function. But that just seems to reduce the item colours, not exactly what I am looking for.
I looked into guard.var and guard_type.var but there seem to be no changes in the variables called loot. I wonder why the loot is so much smaller in New Horizons?

I didn't mean variable itemrarity.
Loot is based on variable shoplevel for items,
Problem with loot - game count as droppable only 0-6 shoplevel,
So, giving "1-2 Devils" possible loot like from lich does break game balance.

Interesting. For a test I set everything to shoplevel 1 and after the first few sites I got only spells and contracts. I see the problem now, if I just set all the shoplevel 6 items to level 5, there would be no items dropping at the level 6 sites.
Maybe I'll just play Genesis for a while.^^

IIRC if the game rolled "shoplevel" lower than it should, it gives two items of tier-1.
So, if you replace all 6 for 5, in the site you will get 2T5 instead of 1T6