Warcraft: War Heroes - Official Thread

[Mora]

It's something that has been happening through many turns. Saved game would not explain. Elves have attacked across the bridge from Warsong Lumber Camp to Valormok on the right bank (where the outpost is situated). They were victorius, but instead of pushing south they retreated back across the bridge with the bulk of the forces. They just sit there, together with Humans and Gnomes army. When Orcs (me) amass enough forces in Valormok, they attack again and then retreat back. It happened two times already. looks like they want to take over stronghold, but don't want to use the obvious route.

[ff03k64]

@Mora A saved game most importantly gives the game history. And for me it would let me know what else is in this area. Maybe they think that someone else is too close to their capital? I don't know the map enough to make heads or tails of anything from a single picture. Frostion probably does, but the AI person also probably doesn't.

While I am not a developer, working on a map gives me some extra perspective. My thought is that the devs never complain about too much information. If you give too much info, they might not need it all, but they can get started trying to figure the problem out and ignore what they don't need. They also do this in their free time, so they might not be on for a couple weeks at a time. Then if you have moved on to another map, they don't have to hope that you remember all the details.

[Mora]

Here's saved game file.
autosaveAfterNight-ElvesNonCombatMove.tsvg

[Mora]

Does anybody know whether there's a simple way to just remove all air routes from the map? If it is not too complicated, I could do it myself.
I would really like to play this one again...

[ff03k64]

@Mora you want to make them work for everything? Or nothing?

[Frostion]

@Mora I am glad that you like the map, even though development is very slow at the moment. I totally agree on the issue of the AI stacking units in some territories. As you probably know, it is because that the AI thinks it can traverse a connection when it really can’t. This really ruins the game and I will keep asking the devs for help and hope that they at some point will look into this AI problem.

I do realize that the map distribution of items and nice hero stuff is in no way guaranteed to be even or fair, not in an AI game and not in a Human vs Human game. Even though I would like to keep things as fair a possible I have a hard time figuring out how this can be done. But, I hope, that with the vast amount of items that are available during each play through, all heroes do each get a good portion of the weak, medium and strong items. So maybe this acts as a balancing mechanic … a little.

As you point out, the heroes are strong units. They are actually super strong compared to the normal units. But they are also meant to be this way, so I don’t see it as a problem. They can also revive pretty fast and pretty cheap. This is can be changed, but as I see it, if a player loses his hero in a battle early on, and there was a big penalty for dying or it cost a lot to revive, then that player would be set back A LOT compared to the other players. So I am not really sure how / what to do to change things for the better?

I have had very little time for TripleA lately, but I have managed to do a little update. I have added a new XML in this here new version of the map that will allow you to play without the airways. I cannot guarantee that there are no new issues or missing connections. Please keep an eye out for leveling and item details / issues. Test it out and give some more feedback

I will probably open a GitHub issue in regards to this AI issue. Hopefully a dev will take an interest in it … as this “feature” (connections with unit type restrictions) could potentially be useful on other innovative maps and special situations.

v1.5 to v1.6 changes (downloadable soon):

• All “handover” debuff spells, that are delivered by casting the spell onto the enemy, now get removed by the start of the original casters turn. So Frost, Earthquake, Solar-Fire, Roots and Lunar-Fire will now only remain on the board 1 round or until captured.

• A lot of Hero abilities adjusted in strength for balance.

• All the Heroes now have levels and ability descriptions in the Hero Bar. Abilities are not at all “equal”, but an effort has been done to balance the heroes and their relative power to each other when they reach level 8. This has been done by using the battle calculator, where level 8 Heroes, assisted by a small army, battle other level 8 Heroes, assisted by a small army. This is of course because Heroes often do not fight alone and Heroes often have support abilities.

• Added a temporary XML called “Disabled Airways Version”, so that beta testers may play this map without having the AI stacking units up in territories that have airways / connections that only allow certain units types to pass.

[Mora]

A big thank you @Frostion ! I appreciate you showing interest in my post. Now I have to decide if I am to wait for v1.6 or start playing v1.5 immediately. Frost was really nasty. A real gnoll killer. I hope that this traversing issue was really 90% of the problem for this map. I plan not to use flying ammunition, to make things fair and more challenging. Fliers will keep at least some of their value, because of the ability to fight over sea.

[Mora]

By the way, how does the targeted attack / defense work target-wise? Is it completely random or is it based on some specific rules?

[Trevan]

@Frostion said in Warcraft: War Heroes - Official Thread:

I will probably open a GitHub issue in regards to this AI issue. Hopefully a dev will take an interest in it … as this “feature” (connections with unit type restrictions) could potentially be useful on other innovative maps and special situations.

If you can give me a save that illustrates this issue and help me with understanding what should be happening, I'll take a stab at it. I don't know the routing code so it might take a bit.

[Frostion]

@Trevan It would be very much appreciated if you could look into this Let me try to explain the issue at Github:
https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/issues/8266

[Mora]

Now playing v1.6 under engine 2.5, air routes disabled. I am playing as Troll, all others are AI. Save game file after 5 rounds attached.
Like expected, for now AI works perfectly. No longer stacking around capitals. Instead, all factions are progressing around the map normally. For now, I have encountered only a few minor issues:

• whenever 2 is rolled, it is displayed with a die and two pips instead a number (this doesn't impact gameplay)
• Hero stats in the banner up top aren't perfectly aligned (this doesn't impact gameplay)
• Quality bow actually adds TP to existing value (3+4=7). From the description I was expecting it to replace existing TP value (4 instead of 3) (don't know if this is an actual issue).

autosaveAfterTrollsNonCombatMove.tsvg

[gr8gamerguy]

I noticed after Khorman picked up magic bow (+7 targeted strike), no roll was made; just auto hit. Sounds like same problem above.

I also notice Arther is getting +100xp per turn.

[ff03k64]

@gr8gamerguy If you can attach a save game, that usually helps.

[Frostion]

@Mora I took a look at the v0.1.6 XML and did not find any errors related to your Trolls and Quality Bow problem. (Although I fixed a Gnome problem/typo with Gnomen ranged weapons).

I did a test play through myself, with Trolls, and was lucky enough that he Quality Bow spawned just besides Trolls. I did not see a faulty change of Troll hero stats. It matched what I expected when taking my hero's items and starting stats into account.

I loaded your savegame and took a look. I can see that your hero has the item Horn of Cenarius, and that unit “Gives 5 Friendly Ranged Units +3 Targeting Power”. Like all the other items with similar description (“Friendly Units”) this also applies to the Hero itself. If it was to say “Enemy Ranged Units” it also applies to the enemy Hero. So in your game, the hero had TP 4 + TP 3 from the item.

Friendly Ranged Units is here "AllRangedLandAndAirUnits" that accually mean ALL units able to AA:

<attachment name="supportAttachmentHero-of-Trolls-uses-Horn-of-Cenarius" attachTo="Sian-tsu" javaClass="games.strategy.triplea.attachments.UnitSupportAttachment" type="unitType">
        <option name="unitType" value="$AllRangedLandAndAirUnits$"/>
        <option name="faction" value="allied"/>
        <option name="side" value="offence:defence"/>
        <option name="dice" value="AAstrength"/>
        <option name="bonus" value="3"/>
        <option name="number" value="5"/>
        <option name="bonusType" value="Horn of Cenarius"/>
    </attachment> 

@gr8gamerguy Yes, as ff03k64 says, a savegame can explain a lot

Here is an updated v0.1.61 XML, but it is not with disabled Airways. Its the normal XML warcraft_war_heroes.xml
Open your zip and the "original xml" directory, then drag and drop this file to overwrite. Or delete and redownload the entire map to update

Please keep the test feedback coming!

[Mora]

Here's situation at the end of 15th turn (v1.6 under engine 2.5, air routes disabled, playing as Troll, all others are AI). Everything runs smoothly. All factions are playing smartly. Tauren invaded islands, some factions even established Watch Towers, which made me happy. Hero's attack roll makes sense. Now, Sian-Tsu has Mystical Scepter and targeted roll of 10 (always hit), which isn't uncommon.
I'll try to use hero in a suicide missions as much as possible, to see if my theory works.
In this and also in my previous game, I noticed that Dwarves are quick to establish navy and smart in making surprise landing, which they do not attempt to reinforce later in the game. On the other hand, Undead don't like to build ships, even when it would make sense. Looking into it, I see that they lack woods. I don't know whether distribution of trees is random in this map.
I would still like to have info about how target selection for targeted attack works.

autosaveBeforeEndTurn.tsvg

[gr8gamerguy]

@ff03k64
This is the game after 12 rounds. Arthur is already Level 8; now xp per turn seems back to normal. I changed Horde to human-controlled on turn 11.
WoWAlliance.tsvg

[Frostion]

@gr8gamerguy You got free 100XP per turn with humans, instead of only 10 XP, as you are playing with map version v0.1.5 XML. If you download the map now, it is v0.1.7.

You should also try to play with the newest pre-release of the engine. The AI now can use "Airways" it seems

https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/releases

[bel246]

I just played a game as Alliance. I am very impressed how the map has developed. I am glad to see that the Horde is now playable by the AI. I also love to see the AI building factories when needed. Here is what I noticed:

1. The Information given in the map has improved a lot. Especially knowing what the hero levels do is great. Yet there are still quite a few items without tooltips and I can't figure out what they do. For example: Energy-Shard, Arcanite-Hauberk, Sobi-Mask, Amulet of Accuracy, Moonstone Item etc. The same thing is true for map features like: Gold-Mine, Oil-Well, Brown Worgen Chest, Gold-Smelter etc. The exact amount in a tooltip would be great.
2. I noticed something weird when attacking map spawned factories (like Manor or Tower). If I capture them they get the maximum amount of raid damage even though I didn't attack with any shots set to bombard. Is that intended? Capturing factories built by players doesn't do that.
3. That brings me to the next point. 25 PU's to repair a factory seems quite harsh, especially given how easy it is to get enough bombard. Thats a lot more then the average unit I buy (20 for footman). A new factory costs 30 PU's. I can almost build a new one if I don't want to repair and gold is not a problem. I played on AI income of 200% and I could easily outbomb the Troll production by standing in Hammerfall.
4. This was the first time I played Alliance and I think they are a lot stronger then the Horde. I remembered how difficult it was to get harbours as Horde so a part of my strategy was to deny the Horde ship access and get all those water ressources for myself. This worked very well.
   Undead have a long way until they get their harbour. I was able to conquer it with my cavalery faster than they were. Also having access to a harbour a lot earlier as Dwarfs means I could build transport ships and just conquer their coast. Once you have a transport ship and a warship or a flying machine in reach of their harbour the AI just doesn't build ships at all. That is logical since they can only build one and I could easily destroy everything they build.
   Tauren is the same idea. Nightelves get ship acces earlier and if you park a transport and a battleship in front of their harbour they won't bother with building ships. It is a little more difficult to do because of the more limited ressources of the night elves but the gains are high.
   Orcs are similar to Tauren. Goblins basically start with a harbour and can therefore easily capture a second one. If you can get sea superiority before them they have a hard time taking it back because they are limited to one ship per turn. They have quite a few flying units but here I have another observations. The AI doesn't seem to take into account that they can land flying units on water. I have never seen them do that.
   Trolls have a starting harbour and it is hard to deny them access to the sea. They are one of the weaker races ressource wise though and in my game they built just one ship anyway.
   The reason why I write about this in length is that the sea has huge amount of ressources, especially food. I have seen the AI build a lot of irregulars which made the game much easier. If you control the sea you also have the advanced tactical option of naval raids. With so many lands to defend it makes the AI split up their armies to be prepared for naval invasions which in turn makes defending and advancing the front line easier.
5. Balance wise I think it is not fair that all the Alliance factions have air units but not all of the Horde factions. Escpecially when the Horde also suffers a disadvantage at sea. Alliance in general seems a lot stronger than Horde.
6. The level 3 trap of Ayanna reads: Lays a trap that kills one enemy unit. That sounds like a suicide attack. But actually isn't, you can kill 20 units with one trap if you get lucky with the dice. It effectively is a normal unit with 0/1/0. Free units every turn is very strong in my opinion even if it is only in defense.
7. Khormanns level 4 reads: Gives one unit +10 defense. The tooltip of the potion itself says this is only for the first battle round which is correct. Maybe make them the same. I only read the level on Khormann and it took me while to figure out what was wrong. The same thing with Arthurs level 3 and 9 and Khormanns level 2.
8. Frost spell of the gnomes is overpowered. Two big armies facing each other, let's say 30 units each. Marryk comes and throws a frost spell at the other army. Most of this army can't move at all anymore (with the exception of 2+ movement units). I can use my 30 units somewhere else while Marryk just throws a frost spell every round and stun locks 30 units with it.
9. I still think cav is too easily countered by spearmen. -3/-3 seems a little harsh.
10. Can Air units target submarines in the first battle round like in nwo?

Thats all I have right now. It has been a pleasure to play the map again and I am glad how it has improved. Keep up the great work!

[zlefin]

I'm exploring this map. Played one game part way through vs ai; and let the ai just run against itself to see who won (alliance got a clear dominant position ~round 35). Very fascinating use of triggers, and quite pretty.

In the game I played, as Humans, it seemed to take a long time before I was actually reaching any of the enemies. I start quite far from all of them, and there's lots of empty land to grab, so I don't get to engage real foes for a long time.

It seems odd how many of the territories are wholly undefended; it makes the early stage very much about sending out single units just to land grab as much as possible, at least for stuff that's not too near an enemy. And often even then just to grab artifacts.

Which engine versions are needed to have the map work optimally? it says 'use the most recent version', but the most recent ones often have bugs from being in development, and depending on what the map was last updated the current stable version of the client may be fine; it'd be nice if there was a precise engine version specified as what's needed.

It seems weird that regular units generate a 'veteran' currency that gives free veteran units rather than upgrading regular units to veteran ones. It means keeping units alive, so they produce even more units.

[zlefin]

Found an odd bug, not sure if its in the games xml or in the triplea engine, so reporting here first; I'm using version 2.5.22294 perhaps the issue is because my engine isn't the most recent prerelease.

BugStormGardeUpgrade.tsvg

I have an outpost and a watch tower in my set of items to build.
At StormGarde keep, it won't let me upgrade the watch tower into an outpost (ie I click on Stormgarde keep, and the list of buildables only shows regular troop). However if I build the watch-tower somewhere else, then it WILL let me upgrade the watchtower at Stormgarde keep into an outpost.

It's very odd that it does that, changing what it will allow based on whether an extraneous item is also in the build queue.

REpeating in an even clearer more bug reporty way:
Load save (it is currently in placement phase)
Click on Stormgarde keep.
Note that the list of buildables does not include the outpost.
Click on another province to build the watch-tower
Click on STormgarde keep again
Note that the list of buildables now includes the outpost.