A Few Jump Start Ideas

[Boaster]

As Marauding Parties will say in my mod: "We are not Marauders! We're independant agents of random destruction."

Marauding Parties are a fun element in the game. And I will work towards making Marauding Parties more agressive, attacking units in buildings rather than ignore them.

However, I do wish there were more kinds of "Neutral" players other than just the Hostile Marauders. Merchants to trade with at outposts, each with unique politcal relations. And Mercenaries to hire at outposts, who also have unique politcal relations with the faiths.

And what I mean by "unique poltical relations" is that every outpost will not share a collective political status. You can trade poorly with an Order outpost and ruin a trading relationship, but your relations with another outpost, perhaps controlled by Dwarves , won't be affected.

As far as campaigns, yes, the game could have used more of these.

[jopaed]

What I would also appreaciate is a realistic autofight. this is so unbalanced, that i invented a tactic, where i get into a very hard fight with mages, destroy the best MOnsters with my spells and then click autofight-
And Win, although I wouldn't stand a little chance.
Then I Would like to see more unique Faiths, in my oppinion they are to even.
For example:
Water is very quick and has a high rate of attack, medium armor, little Hp but great health regeneration, even in Combat.
Their Magic is Defesive with Armor spells, healing, slowing or building walls on the battlefield.
Their Tactic is to strike fast and then get back and regenerate
Fire has destructive Warriors with much HP and damage, but low armor attack rate and health regeneration. Their Problem is that they get healed VERYY slow, because their Magic is also destructive only, with improvement Attack damage, making Massive Damage and Summons.
Death has many and cheap units. They have little HP ,armor, attack, attack rate adn health regeneration. But thats not bad, because the units are cheap and their magic summons new Warriors and brings old ones back to life.
Chaos is a random faith.
All Their Units have random stats in each fight. That means that all Combat stats will be randomly chosen in each combat (For Example Damagage and Armor of the Champion Lv1 will be between 5 and 15...).
Same with their magic, you wont really know what you get when you cast. Eather Massive or poor
Every faight against chaos can be brutal or easy.
Life has weak Combat units, but great range fighters and the magic is healing, improving stats and destroying undead. Also life units regenerate while in Combat.
Order is very heavy to beatable. Their Units have great armor and liitle attack, HP, regeneration and attack rate is medium. Their magic
is supprorting and confusing the enemies. Also there are spells to try
to force enemy units to retreat or attacking their own allies.
Air units have no armor and ignore the enemies one. They are very fast in Combat with a great regeneration rate, but have little attack and HP. Their Tactic is to kill the mighties Enemies on the Battlefiled and retreat. In Later games they can summon new units to help
Their Magic is Slowing, Speeding, Damaging, summoning and upgrading.
And last, earth units have the strongest warriors, with much HP, Attack, Armor and spell resistances, medium attack and regeneration rate. On the other side, they have no range at all.
Theit magic is improving their combat abilities further, slowing and binding enemy units and make invulnerable walls (for example against range attacks and attack spells)

Also, units have more Hp and every unit deals at least 1 point of damage in combat.

And the fame should be real integrated. When i fight a whole week and put all my followers in fame, i get often nevertheless only one or two new followers.

I think too, the temple should create much more fame, as it is a symbol of the faith and should be very important

[thandu]

I'm not too much a fan of the layout. It seems a bit complex. In this way, there are simply just some combos that work better. Spriting out all these combos would be a bit of a nightmare too.

Also, on your list of races, why not add Dryads and Ogres and especially Gnomes?

Ogres (Heavily Bonused Strength, Bonus Mana, heavily penalized Dexterity)
Gnomes (Heavily Bonus Wisom, Bonused Mana, penalized Combat Speed, heavily penalized Strength)
Dryads (Bonus Dexterity, Extra magic Resistance, Penalized Combat Speed and physical damage resistance)
Brownies (Bonus Movement Speed and Dexterity, Penalized Strength and Health)
Imps (Bonus Movement Speed and Magic Resistance, Penalized Health and Strength)
Half-Ogres (Bonus Strength and Mana, Penalized Combat Speed)
Flame Dwarves (Bonus Strength and Melee Resistance, Penalized Combat Speed and Wisdom)


Also, unit types and weapon/mount should be important. For instance, Cavalry and Paladins sent up against a Halberdier would take immensely more damage than from a Mace Infantry. Likewise, Camel Riders would do bonus damage to horse cavalry as well.

Things like that should be considered.

[Boaster]

They are just Jumpstart ideas, which is why it may appear I have neglected Ogres or Dryads. I would probably categorize Ogres as mutated or Lesser Humanoids. Dryads might be considered apart of the Elf family... perhaps.

What makes a Dryad so different from an Elf? And the same with an Ogre to a Human.

[hark]

I've thought about the idea of a LOM 2 for years, and I must say I like the ideas I see here, some of which I've had myself.

I like the idea of any race/class/faith combo being an option, not just for leaders but for any units. I don't think the races need to be balanced in terms of power, more powerful races would just require a lot more experience to gain in levels.

Units and champions should be customizable also in terms of Equipment and mounts, with different faiths having different styles of equipment and mounts. You should also be able to acquire the equipment of other faiths through trade or conquest of the faith.

One of the biggest changes I would make is with the Leaders and Champions. I would give each of them two different levels, the first being an adventurer level and the other being a General level. The Adventurer level would be used to determine the person prowess of the champion, and be pretty much like the currently existing system. The General level would be used to determine the champions ability and skill as a general, the leader of an army, giving units working with them bonus and giving special abilities to the champions that effect friendly units or just large areas.

To go along with the idea of Adventurer vs General I would make Dungeons much large and detailed, but also cramped spaces so using large numbers of units in them is totally impractical. And battle fields would be huge, to compliment this units would be much larger providing for a much more epic clash as the armies collide. I would also extend the battle field into the third dimension making flying units a much more tactical option. For battles in villages and cities I would also be the whole city mapped out in detail with structures that have actually purpose and value being damageable in the struggle.

As far as magic more of it in every way. Each race should have its own affinity for magic modified by its faith. Any wizard can use any faiths magic but its power would be determined by the race and faith of the wizards. Spells with massive area of effects and those that just enhance the entire army or battle field would fall under the General class, while personal enhancement spells and direct damage and smaller area of effect spells under adventurer levels.

I would like for a more detailed economy, and villages to play a much larger role in the game and be more common. Also the world needs to be much larger, and probably more realistic in terms of oceans and seas. Mountians need to be bigger and more treacherous, forests denser, and just a general sense of epic and fantasy added to every aspect of the environment.

Naval combat needs to be completely reworked. Not only should ships sail around and shoot at each other, but their should be boarding going on and archers shooting their weapons. Make sea trade an important and needed part of the game to encourage naval combat.

Resource producing structures should have their own small amount of defense, and probably upgradeable. I always wanted to see a death owned gold mine operated by zombies commanded by a low ranked necromancer, or just a bunch of mine worker and few guards taking up shovels and picks against an would be conquerer.

I'm not sure what I would do with thieves, but I would make them more user friendly. As is when I play them I usually play them solo because in combat I need to devote 100% of my attention to them to make them effective in combat.

I know I have more ideas for a LOM 2 but I can't remember them all right now.

[Shaihulud]

I think you should reduce the number of teams, not increase them or mix them up more. Look at disciples3; they’ve reduced the teams from 5 to 3. Starcraft is much more balanced than warcraft3. This is because balance complexity and design difficulty increases at a geometric rate for every team you add. Starcraft has 3 teams, which is equal to 3 matches. When you only add one more team like in warcraft3, it doubles to 6! Right now with 8 teams the game has 28 balance matches. Reducing from 8 to 5 would cut it to 10. That’s almost a third of the difficulty. Further it lets you resolve some of the variety issues. As it stands now the teams aren’t very interesting. Their gameplay is almost the same no matter what team you choose and some of them even use the same units. By decreasing the number of teams that have to be designed for, some truly unique unit, hero, and team designs can be implemented to make it feel like you’re really picking a different nation/religion with their own style of gameplay over another, rather than just “ooo this team has +2 archer range and one extra healing spell!” but perhaps I’m in the minority here...

[Boaster]

Jul 26, 2008 15:33:28 GMT -6 @Shaihulud said:

I think you should reduce the number of teams, not increase them or mix them up more. Look at disciples3; they’ve reduced the teams from 5 to 3. Starcraft is much more balanced than warcraft3. This is because balance complexity and design difficulty increases at a geometric rate for every team you add. Starcraft has 3 teams, which is equal to 3 matches. When you only add one more team like in warcraft3, it doubles to 6! Right now with 8 teams the game has 28 balance matches. Reducing from 8 to 5 would cut it to 10. That’s almost a third of the difficulty. Further it lets you resolve some of the variety issues. As it stands now the teams aren’t very interesting. Their gameplay is almost the same no matter what team you choose and some of them even use the same units. By decreasing the number of teams that have to be designed for, some truly unique unit, hero, and team designs can be implemented to make it feel like you’re really picking a different nation/religion with their own style of gameplay over another, rather than just “ooo this team has +2 archer range and one extra healing spell!” but perhaps I’m in the minority here...

Do not look to Blizzard for balanced games anymore. In fact, they never had a balanced game for the PC. Even Diablo 1 was rigged.

Warcraft II - Bloodlust.
Warcraft III - Quite a few imbalances.
Diablo II - So many useless/bugged skills, and a few very overpowered skills.

I don't know about Disciples 3 or Starcraft. Starcraft is more simple than Warcraft 3 though.

[Shaihulud]

Part of what I was talking about starcraft for wasn’t to make a gameplay comparison. I mean, starcraft is a science fiction rts, and so hardly comparable. And yes, I realize it’s not “balanced,” but is it more balanced than a game like warcraft3? The real reason I wanted to bring up starcraft was its unit layouts, which goes back to my uniqueness and variety issue. In starcraft, when playing as the humans, your first troop you can get in the game is a marine, a guy with a gun. We can compare him to an average missile unit it LoM. The second unit humans get is a medic; a healer unit who auto casts a spell that restores the missile unit’s health. Then against them we have the Zerg and Protoss. The Protoss’ first soldier is a massive blade wielding zealot that costs about twice what the human missile unit costs, but does almost triple damage up close, is faster, and has almost 4 times the health, part of which is regenerating shields. Their second unit is a spider tank. And I mean it is really a tank, but it costs only a little more than the blade wielding zealots. On the Zerg team their first soldier is a bug creature that costs the same as the human marine, but they are way faster, hit just as hard, and come in pairs! So for the same cost as the Zealot you could get four! And their second soldier is a regenerating missile unit that can later mutate into an under ground ambusher that attacks from his hidden hole in the ground. My point is this; look at the starting units. We have a missile unit and a healer, a zealot swordsman and a spider tank, and swarming bugs and mutating ambusher archers. These are just the first two troops, and yet the teams are completely different from each other even at the start. You don’t get that kind of unique gameplay in LoM; everyone has either almost identical, or even actually identical units! When I’m picking a team, I’m really just picking what tiny change in stats I want, and maybe what spells. What I’m saying is that you could make choosing your team a truly profound choice that says something about your place in the game world! Again though, who am I to say what would make a good game? I'm not even that good at LoM.

[Boaster]

I understand what you mean.

True, LOM is not very diverse in it's game mechanics. Warcraft II wasn't diverse, as both humans and orcs had equal counter parts (for the most part), but it was a very good game.

As for LOM2, I think it is important to have diversity with a level of equality.

The formula for LOM was quite simple: Champions, Infantry, Cavalry, Missile and Creature. Nothing is wrong with this. However, each unit themselves needs to be more different than how it exists in LOM. Such as Heavy Cavalry and Knights. It's lame how they're the exact same sprite graphic, and likewise for many other units.

But from what I know about LOM is the creators were given a deadline and were forced to make the game in 1 year's time. This is why the game was plagued with bugs and the graphics were shafted.

LOM2 will just have to improve on what LOMSE did.

[mateusz]

Well I got to say I really liked ideas jopaed posted. This would make faiths much more different and complex (as you would need a different tactic for eacg one).

When speaking about troop diversity, I would really welcome changes to current system. Greater faiths differences, units and unit types availible only for certain faiths, special abilities availible to units frome the begining/after reaching certain rank... All of these could improve the feeling of playing different faith. The system shouldn't be too complex though, or game may be just too hard for newcomers and be very hard to properly balance (some units useless while others overpowered). And to the guy who said late power doesn't matter as experiance can fix it - great, GREAT NO. First, such faith would be unstoppable when it starts rolling; second, everybody would gank it at start to "not let it own us later".

As far as economy goes, LoM could use some major improvement. Not only in amount of resources you gather, but also in increased need for trading. This could also be connected to units, giving players who have patience ability to manually equip their warriors. I really like the idea of sea trading here, though some faiths (like Earth and Fire for example) would need special attention as they may not have early access to seas.

In my opinion politic is fine in LoM. I don't have any suggestions but would not be against changes.

Magic is fine for now, but more spells would surely be welcome. Also (same case as with troops) spells each faith gets should be more different. Some spells should be restricted to some faiths (though here balance may be hard to achieve...). Now though I am out of ideas .

Just my 2 cents here.

[Boaster]

I would like to add, in comment with what you said mat, is that a large array of spells is welcomed.

However, according to the level of the caster and the level of the spell, the amount of spells a wizard should be able to carry in his spell book would need to be limited.

Something similar to the way D&D works would do it, but not the whole "memorize" a certain amount of spells. But rather, a Level 1 Wizard can take with him into battle fewer spells than a Level 3 Wizard can.

Here is a crude outline of spell limitations by level.

	Spell LVL 1	Spell LVL 2	Spell LVL 3	Spell LVL 4	Spell LVL 5	Spell LVL 6	Spell LVL 7	Spell LVL 8	Spell LVL 9	Spell LVL 10	Spell LVL 11	Spell LVL 12	Spell LVL 13	Spell LVL 14	Spell LVL 15
LVL 1	3	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
LVL 2	3	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
LVL 3	3	1	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
LVL 4	3	2	1	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
LVL 5	3	2	2	1	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
LVL 6	3	3	2	2	1	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
LVL 7	3	3	3	2	2	1	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
LVL 8	3	3	3	3	2	2	1	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
LVL 9	3	3	3	3	3	2	2	1	1	0	0	0	0	0	0
LVL 10	3	3	3	3	3	3	2	2	1	1	0	0	0	0	0
LVL 11	3	3	3	3	3	3	3	2	2	1	1	0	0	0	0
LVL 12	3	3	3	3	3	3	3	3	2	2	1	1	0	0	0
LVL 13	3	3	3	3	3	3	3	3	3	2	2	1	1	0	0
LVL 14	3	3	3	3	3	3	3	3	3	3	2	2	1	1	0
LVL 15	3	3	3	3	3	3	3	3	3	3	3	2	2	1	1

3 Spells max per Spell Level and it gradually progresses as you level. Level 1 will start with the option of picking 3 Level 1 spells to add to his spell book. Ofcourse there could be items that would add the number of spells you can add to your spellbook. And you'd be able to continually cast any of these spells in your spellbook, so long as you have the mana for that spell to be cast.



And obviously, any spell that is a Level 15 Spell would no doubt cost a lot of mana, have devastating effects and there would probably be one of each spellbook type to choose from.

But mainly choosing spells for your spellbook would be mainly for in-combat spells. You would be able to choose spells on the overland map and you'd be able to change what spells you want to cast. That or each mage will have to choose these spells when Trained in a building window (Default spells or custom setup). But in that manner, Lords would have to be able to change what spells they want to use... maybe Lords can re-choose spells on a Level up? I dunno. Something.

[mateusz]

Well I got to say I really like your ideas about spells Boaster (don't know if you prefer to be called ManTerA or not ), it would add very in-depth system. I think lords should be able to learn all spells and choose few in battle (just like your table shows) while champions should be able to learn only maximum amount of spells per spell level with no ability to relearn. This would make Lords much more valuable and universal, as well as making champions require planning when it comes to their role on battlefield. I would definately like the system you came up with to be ingame.

I am still thinking about units though... Counters could be added (like easiest to come up with: pikes>cavalry) but than each faith would need certain unit to counter some others (or, it could be used to differ faiths even more, like no cavalry/archers for Earth, no heavy infantry for Air and Life etc). Just some idea.

EDIT: I would also like to see warrior Champions and, especially, Lords to have bigger impact on nearby units. Some kind of Leadership, stats boosting abilities (more than just Battle Cry please...) and certain orders giving troops bonuses to defense/offense against certain attacks/enemies... Just more feeling that army is actually led by him, not like now, where troops are more or less meatshield protecting your hero (of course its better late game but still applies).