Greetings, Warlords

Darklords Rising turns 25 this year. At the height of its popularity, the Warlords series has been considered a peer of Heroes of Might and Magic. Sadly, while the latter has an enduring fan community even for the older games, Warlords 3 has mostly sunk into obscurity.

I've been tinkering with the available modding tools for a while, and I've decided that for its 25th anniversary in August, I'm going to release an overhaul mod, to maybe give the old game a little shot in the arm, and give long-time fans an excuse to delve into it again.

My goals:

-Rebalance all the units in the game. For many, that means only recalibrating their gold cost and some light touches, others will be changed significantly. Outliers that used to dominate competitive multiplayer will be nerfed, many more which were unplayed will be buffed. Abilities that were only introduced in DLR or its 1.01 patch will be a bit more widespread. The intent here isn't to make every unit competitive, but to make all at least playable and not be made obsolete by another, cheaper unit.

-Rework the heroes from the ground up, drawing on lessons from the K4 and X multiplayer mods. This will be major work, and balancing them will be tricky and probably dependent on how much feedback I get. My starting point is to have a common xp chart and AP progression for all heroes, that may get tweaked later on.

-Some light tweaks to the default.rul ruleset. Greater XP rewards for hard quests, and fixed mana crystal rewards from ruins to eliminate the feast-or-famine randomness.

-Comprehensive gold cost standardization across all items, without changing any of their effects. Among other things, the gold cost determines which items are affected by the Shatter and Create Item spells, so this is a necessary step.

-Lastly, it seems possible to modify the 8x8 different default army sets for playing random maps. Once I'm happy with the unit and hero changes, I aim to recreate those 64 army sets to provide for default sides that are both thematic and balanced, with every unit and hero class being well-represented across the board.

I won't be modifying the existing campaigns and scenarios directly, but the goal is that replaying them with the new units and heroes will give you more interesting options for stack building and hero selection. There's no intention to include new art or create new units outright, and the end result will probably not be very compatible with the Stormheim mod, as far as balance and unit costs are concerned.

I will be posting updates and my thoughts on game balance as I go along, both here and at a few other places, to hopefully get some feedback. I've never been a part of the multiplayer community back in the day, but I'd be especially interested to hear from those who were. I don't expect anyone is still playing Warlords 3 multiplayer competitively these days, but I'd be delighted to be proven wrong. Multiplayer isn't the main concern of my mod, but I want it to be a better experience than vanilla DLR for anyone who wants to try it.

Farewell, Warlords. Until we meet again.

Where did 25 years go

I think it's awesome you want to do such a project but I fear the number of hours involved is going to be hundreds if not thousands of hours on your part. In other words it may easily take a year or more to finish this given how much you want to change.

One thing you should probably do is to create your own unit sets and not adjust the existing units. The reason for that is so that players will know whether they are playing with your units or the original ones. That's why the KHeroes got their own name and many players who created custom campaigns and scenarios that wanted to modify units, changed their names (adding a * or ' to the name type thing). The other reason for doing that is if players want to play MP (PBEM or online) they need to have the same units and if yours have the same name as the original it will be impossible to tell if they both are using yours or not. Take a look at the 'Legion of Blood' scenario. That one automatically replaces all the units and heroes and entire look/feel of the game itself when it's installed and goes back to the original when it's uninstalled (that would be a great way to use yours and preserve the original game)

I would also strongly consider modifying the Stormheim unit set too. Virtually everyone uses them so not adjusting them relative to yours will be an issue.

KGB

Time is the fire in which we burn. I've come to accept that these days, I'm as likely to return to cherished games of my youth than to try out new ones.

I hope that getting an 1.0 version of my mod out will not be as time consuming as that. Playtesting and balance tweaking will be the tricky part, but that also relies on how much interest and feedback I get.

Being able to quickly and conveniently play through the existing official campaigns and stand-alone scenarios with my modded unit stats is the primary goal of the mod. I don't see how that can be made compatible with leaving the existing units unchanged, unless I recreated all the campaigns and scenarios. But hard drive space is cheap these days. My hope would be that anyone who wants to keep using K4SH units along with unmodfied ones for multiplayer would simply have a separate installation of the game for my mod. But having a separate version of the units with a prefix that's compatible with leaving original units unchanged and using either in mp might not be a lot of additional work.

If I haven't run out of steam by then, having a look at Stormheim isn't entirely impossible.

Medal Chance and Curse

I'm on vacation the next couple of weeks, but I wanted to write up another aspect before that. One of the more sweeping chances I want to make is recalibrate the medals chance from the top down.

Medals are a hidden stat, which is something i'm not generally a fan of. The concept was introduced in Warlords 2, where, I believe, only units in hero stacks could earn medals. This has changed in WL3, but most heroes still add a small bonus to the medals chance. Some however, actually have a penalty.

In the rules file, you can edit the base medal chance, which is 20 by default. There are a bunch of other modifiers that apply. The most comprehensive write-up of them i've found is this:



In Reign of Heroes, the idea was that earning medals is fairly rare, even more so to get more than one. Up to four are possible. The Medal of Valor item gives all units in the stack one medal, and is considered to be one of the more powerful items. The shaman's Berserk spell also does this, and increases in power at levels 6 and 9. It was considered so powerful in RoH multiplayer, that it was addressed in a patch which increased its mana cost to 14, from originally 9 I believe.

However.

Darklords Rising introduced the Curse ability. Not only can it remove Bless, and make units vulnerable to poison and disease again, it also permanently strips units of any medals they have earned. Ironically, the Medal of Valor and Berserk simply can take effect again in the next combat. But medals earned the hard way, from winning fights, are gone forever.

To me, this means that with unlimited time and budget, SSG should have rethought the medal system back in the day. Now that medals can be lost again, they should be gained more frequently. On the other hand, some abilities have their effects amplified if the unit has medals - Trample most obviously. What I have arrived at is that at the top end, I would leave the medals chance mostly unchanged. Black Dragons have the lowest at 8. But for units that aren't strong enough to go into a high-end hero stack, I would like medals to become a sort of veterancy system where simply surviving a combat should be enough for a high chance of earning a medal. It's also a way to elevate units that are otherwise lackluster compared to others at the same tier, or those which lack any special abilities.

I don't have a comprehensive system for what the chances should be, but my starting point to experiment with is 65 for light infantry, with maybe 40 as a baseline for 2 turns units, and 30 for 3 turn ones.

It shouldn't reach a point where Curse becomes mandatory, but leaving the top units unchanged, (or nerfing them, *cough* elephants *cough*,) should avoid that risk. It's also probably fair to buff Berserk by reducing its mana cost slightly.

I *think* medals were supposed to be a substitute for a leveling system for non-hero units in War2. Especially since units that got a medal in War2 got +1 strength.

I don't believe that was the intent in War3. In fact if you look at the what units get medal chances it appears they were meant to be military training skills given to humanoid type creatures. That's why beasts/monsters/fantastical units etc like Dragons have very low numbers while military type units (Lt and Hv Infantry, Elf Calv etc) have very high ones.

Personally, I like to think of medals in War3 as being military training skills rewards. So organized military units (Lt and Hv Inf, Elf Inf, Dwarf Inf etc) should have very high numbers (maybe 80+) but non military units like peasants should have practically nothing (maybe 10). Beasts/Monsters/Fantastical units should get numbers reflecting whether it would make sense for them to be military trained units. Dragons seem unlikely, Calv and Elephants on the other hand definitely do seem likely and so on.

I definitely think your going the wrong way if you just want to give all 1 and 2 turn units high medal chances 'just because they are 1 and 2 turns with low strength' and give low numbers to 4 and 5 turn units 'just because they are high strength'.

KGB

That's another way to look at it. It doesn't really look that way to me. Dwarf Inf has very low medals chance - 15. Elf Infantry has 30. I'd say it's an attempt as a balancing mechanism for only having 1hp to the Dwarfs' 3. Giant Spiders also have only 1hp, medals 40.

I think Wolfriders have the highest medal chance at 55 in the base game. Not really the most thematically disciplined unit.

Elephants are notorious for the comparatively high medals chance, but that's a relic of only having 2hp and a fairly useless +1 morale in RoH. There, they had high medals as a consolation prize for not bringing a good ability to the stack. The unit stats changed, but the medals chance stayed the same - despite Trample benefiting massively from medals. It's just a consequence of SSG's resources being limited that this fell through the cracks.

Your system could work, but then it would be another factor that had to significantly affect the gold cost of the unit. I see it more as a cushion/catch-up mechanism for the less meta-relevant units. Theme constrains unit stats and abilities, but since medals chance is invisible in game, you can adjust it behind the scenes to soften imbalances.

To be honest, medal chance never figures into anyone's mind when they pick a unit for their side. Getting a medal just doesn't happen often enough to matter (at most 1 unit in a stack gets a medal so in theory a unit needs to survive 8 battles just to HAVE A CHANCE for 1 medal).

Front line units (Golems, Elephants etc) die very regularly because they are in combat. The bonus units (Green/Red Dragon etc) on the other hand tend to live forever because they are at the back. So the bonus units often do accumulate plenty of medals (many times I end up with an Elf Calv or Green Dragon with 3 or 4 medals but I rarely ever had an Elephant with more than 1).

So I wouldn't worry if you handed out a whole bunch of 60-90% chances for a whole lot of units and I definitely wouldn't adjust their cost much if anything if that unit is designed to be front line vs be a bonus unit.

KGB

Back from vacation, and getting my mind back into the game. Let's talk about slayer abilities.

Obligatory ancient links:
web.archive.org/web/19991116190743/http:...rds/dlrslay_101.html
web.archive.org/web/20040714171953/http:.../SlayerAbilities.htm

Now, I'm assuming the second link of those has several mistakes; going with the 1.02 patch log, slayer probability increases differently depending on whether it's a hero ability or a spell. One thing I'm unsure about is whether or not spells and abilities (and items) stack, but if it works like everything else, it should.

In practical terms, slaying wouldn't go any higher than 20% in a competitive game, and you probably won't buy the ability at a lower level, when it is still at 10%. Even so, the impression I've got is that none of the slayer abilities are considered all that useful. My assumption is that Trample and Missiles are simply much more reliable and effective, for efficiently killing ground and air units.

Here's a purely hypothetical thought experiment: If there was only one Slayer ability, and it worked on every single unit in the game, would it be worth it then? Or would it still be outclassed by +/-1 stack bonuses? What would be an appropriate AP cost in such a case?

KGB, one thing I found interesting in your rebalance project is that it seems possible to modify the name (and description?) of slayer abilities. Would that require hex editing, or is there a tool for that?

My thinking is that if slaying was never considered all that useful even against meta-relevant units, except maybe in edge cases when your opponent has Mighty Feast or the Horn of Stone, then no amount of tinkering will make it more than a thematic second-tier ability. Which is fine; heroes should have a few of those.Both thematically and concerning unit coverage, I really like Demonslayer, Deathslayer and Dragonslayer. The other five have problems. I've considered making Manslayer apply to all humanoid units, but that would cover nearly half the units in the game. Maybe not a disqualifying balance issue, if you adjust the price appropriately.

Thank you for joining the forum. I just got back from vacation too.
Spells and abilities (and items) stack - YES, always.
In my opinion slayer abilities are important, and (for example) Palladin is VG heroes beacause it (spell for most importnt slaying plus for examle Manticore or item...).

I still play W3. Usually against one friend, but sometimes we play with four. We play at a very high level, I think. We use GameRanger and we play 5min./turn (+1m. from 20 turn). 1vs1 or 2vs2 with other AI players. PBEM isn’t option.
We use KH heroes and storheim units. We've also added some of the other units (e.g. Drider or Drakes) so my opinions take that into account.
Some opinions regarding your discussion
I usually play different Lords and in my opinion every one there is playable except Summoner.
KSummoner – the weakest and the only unplayable. Slow, slow learner, some useless spells and also no distinctive abilities.
KWizard – the disadvantage is a complete dependence on mana and sometimes completely useless spells such as Banishment or largely Dispel. I would suggest a modification, e.g.remove banishment and add Seige +1/2AP and also Leadership +1/3AP (instead 4AP). He is playable on big maps 1vs 1 only (2vs2 isn’t).
Bard modyfication would be reasonable. For example Leadership +1/2AP but little lowering experince levels.
Palladin is very good, even if it arrives late, so it doesn't need reinforcement. Questing is very important abilities and suits this Lord well.
Speed is key ability, even if it's worth 3 AP (Ranger). If you're thinking about it, it's too cheap, not too expensive. Teleport is less important because it costs mana and not the best Warlords have it (like IMHO the worst Summoner, very expensive for training Alchemist or mana dependent Wizard).
Speed is gamechanger, teleport isn’t.
I understand it will be different in PBEM playing, where speed can be less important than teleport ut we play only using game ranger.

„But I will say that units that don't move at least 16 are DOA (dead on arrival) other than for city defense. In other words, if they don't keep up with a Siege Engine / Catapult they are useless. That's why in the costing charts you'll see that units that move < 16 get a very cheap cost.”
Movement is very important so sometimes units with 20 m/points are considered too slow in our games. 16mvp? This is usually a disqualification.
„A cap on max speed of 28/30 is fine.”
Disagre. Making/leaving a few fast units adds variety to the game rather than disrupting the environment. And that's how lord armies count.
„Slowing down Siege unit is going to be unpopular. In fact it's only going to make heroes with Siege skill that much better in comparison (they don't have to drag along a slow unit) esp if they have a speed skill.”
True, and it is.
Rating of units based on our games.
1 turn
useless (never played): scout, Orc Mobs, Elf infantry, Light Infantry, Skeleton, Heavy Infantry
weak (also not played): Gnoll, Dwarf Infantry, Pikeman, Zombie, Hell Hound, Dwarf x-bow,
not bad (sometimes played): Peasant, giant rat, Giant Bat, Barbarian, Imp, Ghoul
valuable (often played): goblins, Dwarf Runner, Archer, Halflings, Elf archers
2 turn
useless (never played): Heavy Cavalry, Ogres, WolfRider, Catapult, Wight, Gnoll x-bow,
weak (also not played):, Ballistae, Harpy (b. Banshee), Clay Golem, Mummy, Wargs, Ghost, Knight
not bad (sometimes played): Orogs, Green Slime, Light Cavalry, Centaur, Pegasis, Dark Pegasis, Reaver, Plague Carrier
valuable (often played): Elf Cavalry, GiantBee, Nightmares,
3 turn
useless (never played): Trolls, Cockatrice (buged), Minotaur, Dwarf Mutant, Giants
weak (also not played): Assassin, Medusae, Stone Golem, Elf Lord, Eagle,
not bad (sometimes played): Giant Scorpion, Siege Engine, Griffon, Ice Guard
valuable (often played): Gnoll Cavalry, Knight Lord, Ice Demon, Wraith, Unicorn, MoonGuard
4 turn
useless (never played): Rock elemental, Air Elementals, Fire Elementals,
weak (also not played): Elephant, Liche, Fire Demon, Iron Golem, Spectres, Slayer Knight, Treant
not bad (sometimes played): Dust Wyrm, Cave Wrym,
valuable (often played): Archon
5 turn
useless (never played): Silver Dragon
not bad (sometimes played): Red/Green Dragons (because Brass/Emerald Dragon or Drider), Undead Beast, Undead Dragon
valuable (often played): Gold Dragon, Fear/Chaos Dragon (see above), Black/Blue Dragon (but slots)

Very popular or popular (anyway usable) other units (I don't know if they all are Storheim):
1T: Gnomes, Banshee, Halfing Braves, Drow Inf.
2T: Outriders, Drow Cavarly, Undead Horde
3T: Cyclops, Roc Riders
4T: Drider, Barlog, Chimera, Manticore, Lamia
5T: Brass Dragons, EmeraldDragons, Frost Dragons, Lava Wyrm, Flying Fortress

Changing the slayer skills was going to be as you suspected, a Hex edit. Essentially just changing the text descriptions to match the new slayer skills. If I recall, it wasn't going to be that difficult to do.

The reason that most of the slayer skills are considered useless is because the units that have that classification (elf, dwarf, orc etc) tend to be 1 and 2 turn units that are weak and have very few hits. Especially Elves since they mostly have 1 hit and so the slayer skill doesn't even apply since they are dead on the first hit.

As you guessed and Anomander Rake confirmed, the only slayer skills that matter are Dragon, Demon and Death since those go on the powerful units that you want to slay. The Paladin gets all 3 in 1 spell and that at least makes his Holy Strike spell useful.

The units most in need of having a slayer type defined to them are the Golems with their trample which is why I wanted a 'construct slayer' skill to destroy golems, siege units etc and would go nicely on a unit like the Dwarf Mutants and of course on some hero.

Manslayer (really humanoid) is fine to cover all the bipedal creatures like men, elves, dwarves, orcs, gnolls, giants, ogres etc. Most of those units aren't hard to kill anyway so it can be a cheap skill and if it continues to include Elephants at least it has value when facing that powerful unit plus would add in Cyclops another powerful unit.

KGB