Worthy Heroes Thread - Dominions 4: Thrones of Ascension

NEWEST UPDATE to version 1.1
released in 17.11.2013
The Herolist: Z7.invisionfree.com
The Download: Llamaserver.net

Hello. This is the Worthy Heroes mod that boosts some vanilla heroes and adds new modded heroes to several nations. It started in dom3 with Turin as the author, then later was taken over by me, then it got added to the CBM and then I promptly forgot about it as llamabeast and QM handled it. But now I am back as the author and updated this beast to dom4. The download link is in the picture below.

You can see the new heroes and the changes to old heroes in the hero list, currently kept in the dom4mods thread. Link below
Z7.invisionfree.com

The design goal of the Worthy Heroes mod:
- make sure that all nations have adequate amount of interesting heroes.

How this will be achieved:
- increased stats and new abilities for vanilla heroes that are not interesting, or just really weak in general for heroes.
- adding modded heroes for nations that do not have adequate amount of them.

General guidelines:
- When adding or modifying heroes I want to keep the theme of the hero and the nation as close to the vanilla as possible.
- Heroes in vanilla are not really a balance concern. Some strong nations have weak heroes (MA pythium) and some strong nations have strong heroes (berytos, ashdod). Same applies to weak nations. This is not a balance mod. I'm not going to artificially beef up some heroes really strongly just because they belong to a weak nation. In the same vein, I'm not going to weaken heroes just because they belong to a strong nation.
- When I say that hero should be interesting, I mean that in both the thematic sense and the gameplay sense. Most vanilla human almost-thug heroes have interesting backstory and theme (Marcus, Hildegard, Farbaute amongst many others) but fail to deliver on the gameplay portion. Most of these heroes lose to a mere handful of Indy troops in battle so they are mostly used as glorified Indy commanders in-game. This creates a disconnect between theme and gameplay that many people find frustrating and which fuelled the origins of this mod in dom3.
- I previously mentioned that heroes are not a balance concern. I would like to keep it that way. We must take care to not to introduce heroes that could actually be construed as overpowered. I think Tjatse for the northern giants is one of the best heroes (gameplay-wise). He is a SC chassis with a mobility ability and he also diversifies your magic. If I happen to make or boost a hero so that he is better than Tjatse is for the giant nations, a line has been crossed and it ought to be corrected.
- There is a thing as "too much heroes". The goal is not to fill all nations to brim with max hero slots. I'd like to go for quality over quantity here. I think 3-5 is the optimal amount of heroes.

General Things done by the mod:
-Most magicless thug heroes got different boosts depending on the hero, most common boosts are stat bonuses, heroic custom weapons that deal extra damage against larger units, magical armors, more item slots, starting the battle with the "personal luck" buff, custom summons and custom battle start summons
-Magically powerful heroes are not boosted in general, unless their paths count as "uninteresting" for the nation (for example, Abyssia has the Anathemant Warlock hero that gets F3B3H3. Abysia has F3, B3 and H3 coming out of its ears, so the hero got some additional S magic in the mod)
-Really old heroes have been made less old. It's not fun to have your heroes get diseased instantly after getting them. Pretty much all heroes that started old in vanilla are old in the mod too for thematic reasons, just less severely old.

Some changes that were undone from the version in dom3 CBM:
- I removed bonus slots from mage heroes (they do not need the boost, it is just power creep)
- There was a lot of pointless code in that just set some values to vanilla values (perhaps it was intented as quick reference at some point). I removed it
- I went through all the changes and disabled some that were no longer relevant
- Removed some heroes that had crappy sprites and/or were uninteresting and/or did not have their own sprites.

However, there are few things I am unsure of, so I made these polls. Some heroes have changes in the description to justify buffs given to them. I can see how these could be controversial, and to be honest even I don't like some of them. But I'm not doing this mod to just myself, so I did these polls. The first link is for a picture of the unmodded hero next to the modded so that you can tell the difference and I'm going to pool the results sometime after starting this thread and continue development in the way as they indicate.

Edited by: Burnsaber

Hurrah! I LOVE Worthy Heroes.
Thank you.

You know, I just said that something like this needed to be done, and I'm glad it has. Thank you.

-Frank

Thank you, Burnsaber. This mod has always been one of my absolute favorites.

Ah wow, fantastic! That was really fast! Thanks Burnsaber, this is going to be a lot of fun.

It's a bit of a mystery how the CBM version had gained pointless code and misc slots for mages, I don't think I added a single line to the WH section. Though the exact provenance of that version is somewhat lost in the mists of time now, maybe it was before my time.

PS Are you planning to post this in the dom3mods forum too?

As owner of dom3mods I am mortally offended it isn't on there.

Sombledon wrote: As owner of dom3mods I am mortally offended it isn't on there.

It's coming. When I posted this last night the forum initially broke all the formatting, the dudes in IRC can testify. I even did some good old ALL CAPS RANTING in there. I had stay up all night to fix it. I didn't feel like posting the dom3mods thread at midnight. This night is boardgame night so it will be up tomorrow.

As for the pointless code I think that was from Turin's time. But with this many cooks in the kitchen, you can never be sure.

Desura's forum software is very unfriendly to mod threads, in my experience. But it's good you posted it here for people to enjoy.

I initially wanted to close dom3mods and move all the content over here but after some time I realised the forum software is too much of a blocker and dom3mods still had a purpose.

Thank you Burnsaber, I appreciate the work that you did to rethink the mod for dom4 instead of just doing a straight convertion from the old dom3 version.

Edit: Sorry, accidental post.

Edited by: llamabeast

very nice,thanks a lot!!

You're awesome, thanks.

I've always loved worthy heroes, many thanks for this!

Incidentally, where the hero is listed as Name (unit number) as opposed to Multihero (unit number) does that mean you can only have one of them but the name will be randomly generated?

Good stuff. Thanks, Burnsaber.

Awesome--I am not going to use this mod but incorporate some of the changes you made into my own mod!

Hmmm, two related questions:

I noticed that some of your mundane, non-magical melee heroes such as Pathos get to cast "Personal Luck." Two questions here:

1. Does this cast consume your first turn or are they effectively an extra turn of the cast before you go the first turn?

2. How do you mod buff spells such as this in general?

Thanks in advance.

P.S. I can't tell whether Pathos is based more on Achilles or Heracles!

Epaminodas, I believe the command you are looking for is #onebattlespell. It triggers before the first turn, similar to how a Crystal Matrix casts Communion Master before the first turn.

Great, thanks--more modding possibilities!

that is a fantaistic mod, thank u! great, and very rich, quiality work!

i would like to share one of my opinions. i think the ea mictlan hero tepeyocatl's air magic shouldnt be boosted to level two, thus giving mictlan easier access to an otherwise very hard to get path (for them). And access for instance to flying boots, and arrow fend, and the ability to cast auspex. Lack of air magic is one of mictlan's weaknesses, and A2 on him instead of A1 is a significant change in that aspect (especially that high luck scale is quite optimal with mictlan), so i wouldnt change that. Lets have their small/low access, let him sitesearch manually and wait for the 30 air gems to empower.

P.S. Is there a way to give an extra slot to 4-armed units like the Devata? I tried the following, but didn't work:

#itemslots 30
#itemslots 128
#itemslots 1024
#itemslots 2048
#itemslots 12288

P.P.S. In the Worthy Heroes mod text, I find this code, which seems to be for an extra slot on 2-armed, normal units:

#itemslots 31878

But I do not find this code on the modding manual. So is there a more complete list of slot codes somewhere?

you have to sum the body parts you want, and use the "itemslots" command only once

modding wrote: Sets which item slots are available for this
monster. See Table 12 for useful slot values. If
you want to have 2 hand slots and 1 body slot
then just add those two numbers together.

knightofni wrote: you have to sum the body parts you want, and use the "itemslots" command only once

modding wrote: Sets which item slots are available for this
monster. See Table 12 for useful slot values. If
you want to have 2 hand slots and 1 body slot
then just add those two numbers together.

OMG, got it to work. Thanks!

Really great work! Thank you very much.

Can I suggest that a number of the heroes should be H3, now that that matters? Frankly, I'd almost suggest that as a global change - that everyone gets at least one Hero with H3, especially nations that don't get recruitable H3s.
For a few of the Heros (Bloodhenge Druids, for example) it admittedly doesn't make much sense, but for any priest-hero you can easily justify H3, and several heroes (such as Ho Hsien-Ku) can easily be made priests.

I don't think it's worth sacrificing consistency for that. Giving H3 to all heroes who are already H2 or H1 with relevant background, yes, but having as an objective at least an H3 hero by nation seem excessive.

Yeah, Caelos the Sacred One being Holy 3 would be way better and less weird than him summoning temple guards. Menopathos getting Holy 3 would be way better and less weird than him having bonus item slots.

In fact, I think that changing item slots on units is kind of weird all around and should probably be avoided. But it would totally be a cool thing if a bunch of heroes became H3. Pathos is the actual son of a Titan, he should be able to claim Thrones. Devasura the Fallen is still a Devi (even if totally evil), and should be able to claim Thrones. Really, why couldn't Vanlade claim a Throne? The more I think about it, the more national Heroes I think should be Throne claiming.

-Frank