Warcraft: War Heroes - Official Thread

[beelee]

@zlefin you could try running it with the 1.9 stable and the prerelease as well. See if the behavior is the same.

[Frostion]

So I have had some time away from the forum because of real life issues and work. But I can see that the Warcraft map has been play-tested regardless of my absence Nice! Thanks for the feedback @bel246 @zlefin. Constructive feedback always motivates a mapmaker to keep on working on and fixing maps! To quickly state what engine is best:

For PvP I would recommend this version:
https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/releases/tag/2.6.22436
as it seems to be the last version with the - soon to be removed - “NEXT” and “PREV” unmoved unit buttons. These buttons are very good for ensuring that ALL unmoved units get attention during a player's turn, also allowing the player to shuffle back and forth between units during movement phase. (On a side note, I personally see this upcoming removal as an unnecessary setback for TripleA’s UI and play experience. But I might stand very alone with this opinion.)

For play against the AI, I see this version as best:
https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/releases/tag/2.6.22444
as this version (released just after the above) is the first engine with the important AI-update that prevents AI from stacking units in Horde capitals (and other territories with land canal attachments). An issue that always made the AI lose in the long run. Sadly, this engine version is also the first to have the “NEXT” and “PREV” unmoved unit buttons removed.

Q&A:
Anyway, to follow up on the development of this map, I can say that Warcraft War heroes is practically 99% done. The map notes are about 80% done and I am running out of map specific map issues to tackle. Let just try to address some of the recently posted issues:

@bel246 said:
“still quite a few items without tooltips and I can't figure out what they do. For example: Energy-Shard”

I don’t get it. There ARE tooltips for the items? Maybe they are not as self-explanatory as I think? Fore example the energy shard gives 1 Mana resource to the player each round. Perhaps players think that every item does something very special, but this is not the case. A few items are just resource generators that, unlike buildings and territories, can’t be lost to the enemy.

(Factories that are up for grabs) “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.”
Yes it is intentional. This is because it would be unrealistic that an enemy would let a fully functional production facility fall into the hands of an opponent. Also, it would be a too strong advantage for a victor to be able to build in a place just captured from the enemy. This rule/map behavior is also stated in the notes of "Bombardment", but not under "Factories", where I guess you might have looked, and where it is perhaps more logical to look

“25 PU's to repair a factory seems quite harsh (…) Thats a lot more then the average unit I buy (20 for footman). A new factory costs 30 PU's.”
Well it is still cheaper than a new factory. Factories are meant to be cheap and destructible, unlike standard WW2 A&A. I hope this will let the “front” be more dynamic and get the players to make choices between bobarding the enemy factories or try to capture them.

“I played Alliance and I think they are a lot stronger then the Horde” “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.” “If you control the sea you also have the advanced tactical option of naval raids”
Yes. The unequal access to sea seems to be a returning problem. I am not sure that the problem is big during Human vs Human play, but the AI clearly has problems handling the situation. I have been thinking of updating all map resources to only give the player 1 resource per turn, not 3. So a fish would give 1 food, not 3, an Oil Rig 1 Oil, not 3 etc. Maybe this would make controlling the sea leas important. However this would not help the AI in regards to tactically exploiting the sea. Any input on how to handle this would be nice.

“its not fair that all the Alliance factions have air units but not all of the Horde factions”
I hope that the unbalance in access to Air Units can be countered by adjusting unit prices and strengths of units. This will be ongoing balancing work.

“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.”
I can’t explain that. The code of the trap should only let it kill 1 enemy and then die if it actually has a hit:

<attachment name="unitAttachment" attachTo="Trap" javaClass="games.strategy.triplea.attachments.UnitAttachment" type="unitType">
            <option name="defense" value="1"/>
            <option name="isSuicideOnHit" value="true"/>
</attachment>

There is not really any other code attached to the Trap unit. I wonder what could influence the trap?

“Frost spell of the gnomes is overpowered”
Maybe you are right. I guess I have to experience this in action to see it as a problem. I guess if you are not the player with the stuck units, it is just a comical situation But seriously, this is an issue to keep an eye on. My fist thought is, "but this also requires the the gnomen hero to keep pretty stationary and keep casting his Frost Spell at the same territory for the rest of the game."

@zlefin said:
“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.”
Well, this map clearly has inbuilt “stages” of play progression. A player starts out land-grabbing and also fighting lesser AI players, before finally meeting other major players. It was the hope that the player during early game would look at the map and go “that item is a must-have, therefore I ride towards it ASAP”, “That building is essential to reach before the enemy gets it” or “OK, with those buildings at my disposal, I will chose this and that Origin Skill”. There is a lot of randomness affecting early game, but I hope that it is ok and works.

“It seems weird that regular units generate a 'veteran' currency that gives free veteran units rather than upgrading regular units to veteran ones”
I struggled and still struggle with how to best implement a veterans and elites system that both made sense and could work for real. I did at one point want to have regular units upgrade to higher tier units by placing the upgrade on them, but I “dumbed” down the system for the current one. Honestly I can’t remember why, but I guess that I reached a wall (of a nature that I can’t remember. Probably a practical hindrance?) in regards to making the concept into reality. If anyone has an example of a working system of another map, please point at it.

“Found an odd bug … 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”
I managed to load your save game, and I see what you explain. But I have no explanation why one can’t have both types of units in the bank (a simple factory unit + an upgrade unit) and therefor not be able to place the upgrade. It would be cool if a developer could investigate. If I get around to it, I will at some point make an official bug report. But before this it would be nice if a person more experienced in XML could maybe identify if this is actually an XML or engine problem. (???)

[bel246]

Hey Frostion,

sorry for the late reply. I don't know why, but I don't get to see the tooltips on many items. I was really surprised to see your picture. For me it looks like this:

I tried it one the latest stable release and on one of the prereleases: 2.6.22453