HOTFIX: http://www.moddb.com/games/the-protectors/downloads/tpc-beta-v086a-patch-hotfix#downloadsform

So I downloaded this the other day and have tried it out a bit, with mixed impressions. Mostly positive, even if I might not come off as such.

To start with I very much have to voice my approval regarding the changes to the magic system, as it allows me to focus more on the spells I want to use over having 'waste' points on spells I do not. I do however wish that the races with racial spell schools had not been neutered in that regard, especially if you're going to give them casting related skills like Energy, Lore or Ritual anyways.

The Perk and Proficiency mechanics are an interesting addition, though I find them to vary wildly in usefulness. The Morale VS Cost one, forgot the name, doesn't really feel impactful enough if it can only have 5 points put in either direction. That, and if I am going to put points into something I'd rather put them in something that doesn't come with drawbacks often equal to what I would gain. Something that made the Speed-proficiency Perk of Attack Speed VS Movement Speed stand out as a good choice in comparison to the rest of them.

On a slightly less critical, and more positive, note regarding overall Class/Race Skills would have to be the trimming of the less useful skills, such as the specific Race-slayer ones, or individual armor/resistances. Does make each skill you do get a bit more viable to put points into.

Though my biggest grievance so far, right before the lack of racial spell skills, would have to be what has been done to the Minotaurs. While I usually prefer Empire or Ssrathi, the Minotaurs do have a special place in my heart. I've read the reasoning for why they can't repair buildings, being primitive, but I find it to be more detrimental than positive of a change. But that is only the lesser of evils I had to face.

Why the heck did Axe-Throwers only have 2 range now? Why is the Training boost only +5XP? Why only one mana regen research? Why do the Axe-Throwers count as Infantry in towers, rather than Archers? Why does Shamen not have Berserk anymore?(Though thats more of an issue for non-Minotaur races, as it is one of my fave units to put in the retinue for a big damn combat buff on demand).

I realize that some of these things might've been the unofficial patches, rather than official staples, such as mana regen reseach over tier 1 for the Minotaurs, but it felt like I couldn't recognize the Minotaurs anymore. Oh, and regarding Minotaurs, is it done on purpose that Earthpower from Rune Magic does not repair their buildings, or just an oversight? Because I figured I'd give a Minotaur Runemaster a try, as I do love me a Battle-Mage setup and figured that would cover for the lack of native repair. Alas that didn't work, but I did find the rest of the Rune Magic quite potent all the same.

Though if I am to move away a bit from feedback and criticism, perhaps a suggestion would do. Considering you caught sight of my 'what if...' thread about Retinue units being able to wear items, if that ever is to be a feature of the Protectors I'd suggest making it 3 slots per unit. Chest+Accessory being standard, with another slot depending on what kind of unit. IE Weapon for Humanoid Melee Units, or a second Accessory slot for most everything else. If this ever becomes a feature, I think I could learn to love the Protectors regardless of what it might throw my way.

Of course, all of these rambling is from a Singleplayer centric perspective, as I don't have much interest in pursuing Multiplayer gameplay in a game like this. I'm quite fond of playing the Campaign and tending to a party of precious NPCs to fill my Retinue with. Any chances of the Retinue slots being made a bit more relaxed on Charisma requirements to open up?

Regardless, keep up the amazing work, I'll be looking forward to future patches. Expect more rambling walls of text to come, in due time.

there was "official site" mentioned on moddb, which is N/A. Is the project going on? Would love to see it in 1.0 (or 1.x) version.

They were removed to help promote more class choices and because some of the skills caused balancing issues. The spellcasting related skills are temporary, and will likely change in future.

Perks aren't finished yet. Many of them may become 'psychology' perks, which can only change with character actions. Proficiencies are also unfinished, we may see them turn into a 'Faction' choice instead, with race-specific and campaign-related effects.

They may get access to the Slow Repair option or may have access to both fast and slow but with double repair costs, in future.

They exchanged range for damage and also receive no melee combat penalty (all Ranged type units receive no combat penalty in melee unlike Missile units).

Training was causing balancing issues. At +10XP, units were automatically level 3 and were rather too efficient for their tier.

Most races tend to have only one or two mana researches of a type, whilst the Dark Elves have the best access to magical research with three of each. Perhaps hero mana research and unit mana research should be seperated?

That's a known bug. It's the same for all Ranged units.

Because they don't need it as most of their units can already go Berserk, making the spell slot largely pointless. Chaos Aura fitted rather well in the slot.

That's definitely a bug.

That is planned, yes. The retinue may start with 3 available slots instead of 1.

Sometimes some units get like 20 000 HP, so far I was not able to detect the trigger, but saw this happen in 3 different playthroughs.

Yep, The Protectors is still being developed, though progress is slow. We lost a team member about a month or two ago and had some serious difficulties regarding the disappearance of Google docs, which we unfortunately can't get back. I'd expect 0.8.7 will come out much later than expected.

This is a known bug caused by the new Burn status effect. It should be quite rare. I'm not sure when it'll get fixed, could be 0.8.7, or it could be 0.8.8 and beyond.

Thanx for the replies.
Was looking through the documentation, specifically for new items details (some CURSED items have quite vague description on the negative effect..some are clear, like "is made by dark elves and any non-elven race touching this ring will suffer" ... well, still not sure how my barbarian may suffer but at least the condition is clear. But sometimes it is really not clear :(

I was also looking for skills details (for example if Assassination skill countermeasures enemy's assassination skill... basically I could see the best solution that only combatant with higher Assassination could use this skill, but derived by defender's skill )

Anyway, the item sets (like 30 sets found so far) and new items and generally the MOD is great! keep it up :D.
There was Dragons MOD before, made by Andy Hatch. His mod was great too, maybe he could help?

EDIT: ah, and it would be great to have a list of spells and units (especially containing which unit has what attack [groun, air, floating...] and what type it is [monster, spellcaster..] )

I don't think Ahatch would be interested, he's gone off modding for a while now unfortunately.

For a list of units, I'd recommend going into the game folder > Manual > balance.xls. Everything should be in there, including stats, costs and effects (though it won't say the strength of the effect, if you want to see that too, go to English > Help.cfg).

Spell casting info isn't available right now, but at least spell effects can be seen in English > Spells.txt.

I hope this helps. Since the mod is in such a state of flux concerning heros, spells, units, productions etc, no definitive list has been drafted up yet so there's only the balance documents and some game files to go on for now.

Very interesting mod you guys are working on, I'm going to have to keep up with your progress.

I definitely liked the approach in the first WBC game I got where you picked the individual spells in character developement, rather than the WBC3 way of going through the whole school in a circle. So if you've got something with more control of the magic, I'm all for it.

I love:
Seeing income of resources.
New unit AI (magic roaming, magic coward... )
Hero development (perks included, although I expected that negative perks will give skill points, positive will use skill points, but this system is also good, sacrificing x to get y... I am just rarely convinced to spend extra SP on it)
Seeing time to produce units.
New spells and modded spells.
Enemy AI (much smarter, harder to kill... )
Diplomacy skill that can increase army points : so essential for any fight (especially in campaign)
Higher summon level spells also summon more units, not only add XP (love it)
High stability - the game can run at least so long as original WBC 3 without issues or crashes (GOOD JOB!)
Hero creation - I can see what skills I will exactly have (and also read info of those skills (are there Nobel Prizes for modders? You deserve one)
I can put any item on a map in map editor (so I can learn of all the items available ...finally)

What I miss:
unit AI (Roam + convert mines)
Units using spells when garrisoned in towers (I liked having sorcerors in towers and spawning zombies for example, I was actually sad that Hero can't cast spells from tower)
Dragon Knight is not considered as Elven Cavalry
Time Magic spell that should increase speed, combat and DMG (+5/level) is not increasing DMG
Ice Storm still cannot hit anything that moves (quite useless IMO)
Having control of spell range (for example I have Runemaster with high Charisma and level 3 spell that repairs buildings, due to wide reach, I repair buildings that are randomly selected by the system, and rarely those which I moved my Hero to. Similar problem is with Acquire spell... but at least there are not so many mines in my reach than buildings of my own)
Hero creation - Spell skills could show list of spells (instead "you can cast Ice Spells" ) , but well... maybe someday I will learn all the spells :D finally. (or the creation window could have MAGIC Tab active, like during level-up is, where are all spells listed)

Anyway, it's hard to stop playing. The few maps in campaign but also the special maps from skirmish are great. Different than I ever seen in WBC, difficult (like... really) but I love challenges so I try again and again :D

Oh, did I mention the extra helpful add: game allows you "pickup" nine artifacts that your hero was not able to pickup himself while in game, after you win? Just how great is it? How many scenarios in WBC I have won but was not able to pickup the chests/artifacts as enemy heroes died either as the last unit, or I kept my hero out of combat (caster/buffer, not warrior) and sending him to pick some chests was just too risky.
I love you guys.

Just as a heads up, version 0.8.7 is about to be released. You can read the progress here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/10jjfnrHVtyhGid2odnXMbF-UBKwY1AOw81hQAipUJa0/pub

I've been trying to play the vanilla campaign but the mod keeps crashing... Sometimes at the start of mission when dialogs are meant to pop up, sometimes near the end of mission, makes it unplayabe.
Anyone knows possible reasons/fixes? 1920x1080 resolution might be an issue?

After giving the changelogs a cursory glance, I figure I have come to a realization I should've had a long time ago. It is not meant to be Warlords Battlecry 3 capable of running on new hardware/software with some extra features. It is really meant to be its own thing, molded to fit the vision of you folks, right?

I will have to keep that in mind as I play The Protectors from time to time, otherwise I'll probably go mad. It is great to see there still being interest in an old game like this, and I have to commend The Protectors team for the pretty amazing stuff you've done with the game, as I definitely find your efforts both interesting and pretty great.

Again, just my own expectations and interpretations of The Protectors that were miscalculated. As to why I am saying this, it started last time around when I found it strange how you gutted or outright removed range units like the Kobold Sniper, Minotaur Axe-Thrower, or the Dwarf Crossbowman. I figured it was a balance thing for multiplayer games, of which I have no interest of, and thus I did not think a whole lot more about it afterwards.

But after seeing some of the changes you did to the magic schools, in particular Rune Magic, I figured I had to re-evaluate how I looked at The Protectors.

I believe I mentioned it last time, that I had made a Minotaur Runemaster in order to repair my buildings, but that didn't work in the last patch. But now, with Minor/Major Earthpower being specificly made for Mechanical/Undead units only, that is two wasted spells for Minotaurs. Wouldn't those two spells only really be useful for Dark Dwarves and Undead, and maybe Dwarves?

Also couldn't help but notice that the Minotaur(Race) notes didn't mention being able to Slow Repair buildings, while the Barbarians got that functionality added. And if the Rune Magic/Geomancy magic for repairing structures is still there, can it repair Minotaur buildings now?

Can't say I am a fan of further restricting the Hero avatars/models, mostly because I frequently used the Dark Elf one when playing as Undead. Only saw mention of more Portraits being made available for various races, or was there also some new/altered avatars/models added too?

All the same, I am going to download 8.7 and give it a whirl, as my options for playing Warlords Battlecry 3 without too much difficulty are few and far between nowadays, and I will no doubt have fun trying to adapt to the changes your team have made to the game. I just wish some things hadn't changed as much as it has, but again; that is my own perception of The Protectors being at fault, than The Protectors itself.

Rambling aside, many kudos to the team for continuing to develope and expand The Protectors, it will certainly be interesting to see what the future holds for it. Apologies if some of my words were a bit crass or poorly chosen, just know that I hold no desire for the team to change their vision of The Protectors. Just airing my thoughts, as incoherent as they might be.

Edit: I noticed 'Permanent Retinue' in the options, which got me curious as to what precisely this meant, so I checked in on the changelogs. The Changelog only said "*Added new gameplay option Permanent Retinue" with little explanation. I also noticed the changelog could use some spacing here and there, such as skipping a line between the end of one Magic School and the start of another one. Something to consider for the future, perchance?

Edit 2: Strange, I got The Protectors 8.7 to start once, then quit out without issue, but now it appears to refuse to start again. The wonders of dealing with technology.

Edit 3: Got it working now, but upon seeing that C. Campaign no longer being the vanilla/original Campaign made me a bit sad. Any way to restore/re-add it?

Indeed it is not meant to be Warlords Battlecry 3. It isn't a patch, it's a mod that intends to modernise WBC with the fans in mind. Everything is at least a bit different.

Stats were changed and the units cater to a new style of play. The Dwarf Crossbowman has switched sides to the Dark Dwarves. Nothing has been gutted or removed from the game since version 0.8.4 or maybe even earlier.

They aren't, they still heal everyone's buildings and mechanical units. They just have extra synergy with Dark Dwarves & Undead. Balancing-wise it's actually not bad, it just may need a bit of tweaking.

This was left out due to time constraints, sorry. It will be available in the next patch version.

Yes. All tests with Earthpower have shown that it works as intended.

More hero options in general have been added. The only avatars removed were vanilla ones which didn't fit for certain races. These races have instead received an altered version of removed vanilla models (to fit their race better).

Permanent Retinue means that even if a retinue unit dies, it will not be deleted from the hero. With the option on, retinue units will persist like heroes instead of disappearing upon death.

We will try something like this in future to separate them, thanks for the suggestion.

Yep, it's now free DLC! Grab it here: http://www.moddb.com/games/the-protectors/addons