Different movement rates leading to different XP rates is EXACTLY what you should be trying to do. That's why I adjusted the tables for the KHeroes and later the XHeroes modified that again.

Making Speed/Teleport cost 3 AP is up to you. But I doubt it's going to help your balancing things as much as you think. The reason it was set to those values for the XHeroes is that so on turn 2, a hero could not have Speed/Teleport if they started near a couple cities/ruin and were able to reach 10 XP on turn 1. All of which sounds great, but then how do you set the XP table for the heroes now because once they have that skill they get XP faster but it now takes longer to get the skill. More importantly, if the hero isn't your 1st or 2nd hero it may be almost impossible to get the skill once most the cities/ruins are gone and getting XP is that much harder (because only 1 hero at a time can quest).

For example consider the 'questing' skill the Paladin has (doubles XP from quests). It costs 1 AP and as a result the Paladin XP table is higher which you might think balances it out. Which it probably does if the Paladin is your 1st hero and quests are plentiful but mid/late game a Paladin hero is almost unusable because even with questing he can't level fast enough to matter (because only 1 hero at a time can quest). So in reality the XP table for the Paladin is probably too high esp considering 1 AP always has to be spend on the questing skill.

Anyway, one thing everyone agrees on is that L6 is what you want to balance the hero for. By that point they need to have enough AP points earned to be useful (at least one +5 skill of some sort) and a reasonable XP table to get to L6. That's because L6 is where spells double in power and roughly where most heroes finish in a game (campaign is difference since you always finish at L10 due to hero carry over).

The other thing you should do is make non-teleport versions of the teleport heroes. Later on, I made non-teleport versions of the Wizard, Alchemist and Summoner heroes for PBEM play because teleport is so over powered there. I simply replaced the teleport skill with something else and adjusted the XP tables slightly. It's worth doing for PBEM play or for campaigns/maps where you want to use those heroes but not overpower the game with teleport (esp since the AI doesn't use it).

KGB

P.S. For thematic balance I agree with catapults/siege engines. But basic infantry like lt infantry, hv infantry is definitely thematic. That's why there are Dwarf and Elf Infantry, Orc Mobs, Skeletons, Gnolls etc. It's why I suggested Skeletons have Archery +1 (or even +1) as an equivalent of Human/Elven archers so that if you want theme sets (or good vs evil sets) you don't have to have non-themed unit. It's not a requirement but just something to think about.

KGB wrote:


It's absolutely on the table, but I want to learn juggling 3 balls before I add the 4th and 5th. Adjusting xp and starting movement can be done once I have a set of 10 abilities for each hero that I'm satisfied with, and that I have been able to playtest to some extent.



Unlike Questing, these skills have innate value. You don't just take them to accumulate xp more quickly to get to the skills you *really* want. So that's a problem that all late-comer heroes share. If anything, an equal xp/movement starting point levels the playing field in that regard, because that doesn't presuppose you always take one particular skill before all others. Even without the meta concerns of an exceptionally good start, 3 AP seems like a more justified price tag for Speed/Teleport, compared to spending AP on a hero's individual movement.

Questing was one of the first things I decided to cut, for all the problems you laid out. It's a nice idea for an ability, but I see now way to make it work in a balanced fashion in practice. You could turn it into effectively a freebie by giving the paladin an extra AP at level 2, but that still doesn't solve the problem of only one hero being able to quest at a time.



Completely agreed. I wanted to ask how common it is to have a hero reach level 7 (or even 8?) before the game is decided, and if this is noticably limited to certain classes. If I can assume 8-10 only becomes relevant for campaigns or victory laps in AI scenarios, that reduces the balance concerns of the higher AP rewards at those levels. In your experience, how often do you pick the AP quest reward, if it's available? Are hard quests relevant in competitive play at all?

Spells are so much more flexible than the limited selection of normal abilities that I'm favoring pushing level 6 back a bit in general, so the non-magical heroes don't become outclassed too soon. I've considered 70xp as the benchmark, but that's for no other reason than it being an even number of 10 times the medium quest xp.



That's another good point, and I start to understand how it's not simply an issue of increasing the AP and mana costs of teleport to balance it for PBEM. And if I don't want to make the mod just for myself, I have to pay attention to multiplayer concerns.

There's one more thing I wanted to ask; do you have any insight how the AI spends its AP on heroes, or how it prioritizes which units it builds and buys production for? Is it simply random, or weighed in favor of certain abilities (flying)?

Hannibal Rex wrote:


It all depends on the heroes XP table. 80-85XP is pretty much the most you can expect to get in a game before it's decided. For some heroes, 80XP is L7 and for others it's L6. That's why heroes that lacked speed, teleport or group move spells typically reach L6 around 50 XP and L7 around 80 vs heroes that have those skills and reach L6 around 80 XP. In other words 30 XP is roughly the extra movement handicap but that also presumed they got that movement early (2 AP speed or teleport or group move spell).

On occasion I take the AP quest reward. Esp if I am 1 AP short of something important (like reaching +5 in a skill). If you move speed to cost 3 AP then there is a good chance I (and others) might take it as my 1st quest reward so that I get speed or teleport sooner which gets the expansion ball rolling.

I don't think anyone takes hard quests. I bet they are taken <5% of the time. The only place I take them is on the Assassin neutral map where you can early on get a hard quest against neutrals (the only time you can get that) because they have 4 assassin defenders.

Note: In the rules file you can adjust the quest XP so that medium doesn't give 7 or hard 14 and easy 2. Lowering these numbers reduces the value of speed/teleport heroes completing tons of quests for fast leveling. Just something to keep in back of your mind.

Hannibal Rex wrote:


At that point almost no heroes will reach L6 unless they have speed, teleport or group move. Spells cost mana and many maps don't have a lot of mana or you don't get mana rewards etc so that often you can't even use spells for many turns (esp on hidden maps where you can't see where the mana cities are).

Hannibal Rex wrote:


I can't recall exactly. But I believe the AI is biased towards taking +strength and +move abilities because when it was programmed that seemed like a good idea (in War2 it was, in DLR it's not). I think it also has a preference for taking things that cost 1 AP over 2 AP (this is also why it ends up with a lot of useless skills)

One thing for sure, the AI DOES NOT save points. This means that if you make speed cost 3, the AI will never save for speed and will be unlikely to ever get speed until it somehow reached a level where it got 3 AP to spend.

This may make even more work for you, but if you want the AI heroes to be semi-competent, you would really need to make a separate set of AI heroes. Then remove the +speed and +move abilities (or exaggerate them to +5 move, +3 strength type thing so they'd only take them one time) and make stuff like Speed cost only 1 (or 2) AP.

You can easily test this theory by adjusting 1 hero to put speed cost at 1, make move/strength cost 2 or 3 and make other good spells or skills (leadership/chaos/fear etc) cost 1. Then run a play test or two on an open map with no fog of war so you can always examine the enemy hero to see where they spend their points.

KGB

There's a lot of things to mull over here.

70xp for L6 is probably DOA and I'll rethink it. The idea to reduce xp for medium quests and rein in mobility heroes a little that way is intriguing. Having 80-85 xp as the ballpark figure for the endgame is definitely helpful.

AI-only heroes would be hard or impossible to implement for existing campaigns, but would work fairly easily in custom army sets. My first thought there would be to simply give them +1AP at each level up, and see how things shake out.

Mana management is another area I need to figure out. I know you can get one mana crystal as a medium quest reward, but I don't know what the range is for hard quests. For crystals from ruins, I intend to eliminate the variance; 2 for regular ruins, 5 for hidden ones. Mana income is a fairly trivial handicap past the early game vs the AI, so I have a hard time judging how much it keeps spells from dominating multiplayer. In my experience, finding some early crystals changes things a lot, so there's always a randomness about playing heavy casters.

AI only heroes for campaigns shouldn't be any harder than for custom army sets. You'd just have to modify the campaign heroes the AI gets.

It's worth spending a bit of time experimenting on how the AI spends its points. You definitely don't want the AI taking +move something like 7 or 8 times (they can take it until you reach 50 move). That's why I suggested removing things like +move from AI heroes and just giving those heroes +4 move over the human hero equivalent. You can really see how the AI spends points if you play 'battle of the Titans' where you get a L10 hero but the AI spends the AP points for you. You'll tend to end up with a 30+ move hero kind of thing with max strength/hits etc.

I forget how much mana you get from hard quests. I think it's a range (2-4 type thing). It might be in the default.rul file so that you can set it to a specific number (3 or 4 would make sense given how rare the quest is taken).

Your fixed number for ruins sounds good. Multiplayer tends to either be 1v1 (online) or many (2-4) players (PBEM). Solo players typically play vs 7 other AI's. So the amount of mana available is going to widely vary when you have 2-8 players in a game. This is especially true with ruin mana because the AI heroes often gobble it all up where in 1v1 games there tends to be lots available. Plus of course map size matters because largest map has more ruins and thus more mana. It's going to be impossible to get it right because of all the different playing conditions. I'd just concentrate on solo players (vs 7 AIs / campaigns) and let multi player sort itself out.

KGB