Within Warhammer Fantasy, Lords and Heroes were a category of units representing special characters, spellcasters and the leaders of your army. A lot of armies also had both Lord and Hero versions of the same unit.
Taking the Empire as an example, you had the following choices:
Lords and Heroes could be customized with equipment, magic items and Mounts, though only the latter will be translated over into DerpHammer. While recreating all equipment choices would be possible within 0 A.D., implementing every possible combination would be a nightmare so sadly that won’t be a thing.
So how does this translate into DerpHammer?
Thing will have to be simplified a bit, so instead of having defined Lord and Hero options, there will instead just be Generals and Wizards. Not all options will be included in order to remove redundancy.
Generals are the leaders of your army; your Empire Generals, Orc Warbosses, Chaos Lords, etc. They are powerful late-game units that buff your regular troops and can be made even stronger by giving them Mounts. Most factions only get one type of General, so for our example of the Empire, only the regular General of the Empire will be included.
Wizards are units able to use magic. In the Empire’s case, that would include the Battle Wizards (one for each Lore of Magic) and the Warrior Priest. Seeing as implementing the Magic System is currently far down on the priority list, I won’t get into them much for now. (Warrior Priests weren’t categorized as wizards in the tabletop but will be in Derphammer for the sake of simplicity)
Both Generals and Wizards each have their own recruitment limit dictated by how many Civil Centers you currently control.
Not all Lord/Hero choices fit into these two groups, so some will instead be a part of the regular unit roster. For the Empire that will be the case for the Witch Hunter and the Master Engineer.
Mounts
Mounts are an essential part of Lords and Heroes in the tabletop and so naturally this will be carried over into DerpHammer.
Giving your General a Mount will change them from being Infantry to being Cavalry or even a Monster, giving them increased Attack, Health and maybe even new abilities like being able to fly. Initially I planned Mounts to be an automatic progression, however I eventually decided that being able to choose freely would be more fun and interesting.
To unlock a Mount, you’ll need to research the right technology at their respective building. For example, the Imperial Stables gives you access to the “Warhorse Mount” technology, which then allows you to upgrade any General of the Empire to be mounted on a horse. Note that each General has to be upgraded individually.
While you can freely choose each General's Mount, there is still a sort of progression to them which generally follows the following structure:
Infantry -> Cavalry -> Monstrous Cavalry -> Monster
Depending on the faction, this will of course vary. Dwarfs and Ogres for example do not get much in terms of Mounts (if any at all), while Elves and Chaos Warriors get arguably too many.
Since I’ve been using the Empire as an example throughout this article, here is their Mount selection/progression:
Overall pretty linear, but I did throw in a bit of choice in the middle there. (Demigriffs weren't a Mount choice in the tabletop so I took some creative liberty with that)
As with anything, this is just one big work in progress, so the exact details might change over time.
Thanks for tuning in to this little update, I plan on posting more of these little feature overviews to prevent the usual silence when it comes to updates.
(This article was meant to be posted months ago but it somehow slipped my mind)
