25th Anniversary Project mod released!

[Young Donald Sutherland]

If you're paying attention, we've passed the 26th anniversary already, but I started work on my mod last year, so I still get to use the name.

https://www.moddb.com/mods/25th-anniversary-project

This is a rebalance mod which changes all unit stats and completely reworked the heroes from the bottom up. It should be compatible with multiplayer, if all players install it.

But the focus was on creating a balanced and challenging experience when playing the game's single-player campaigns and scenarios. There's still more work to be done to make random maps more challenging, but that's a while away.

[moorkh]

Very cool! Thank you for sharing.

[Young Donald Sutherland]

20/11/2024

Version 0.7

I've been fairly occupied with work for the last couple of weeks, but prior to that, I made solid progress.
SSG co-founder and AI programmer Roger Keating has very generously taken some time to explain some of the code and AI behaviour to me. With additional input from warlorders.com host
KGB, I now have a pretty comprehensive understanding how the AI evaluates its units and chooses which ones to build. I have adjusted a lot of units to better match that behaviour.

The other big change is an adjustment to hero abilities. It became evident that AI tends to overspend ability points on increasing its movement, even once its heroes outpace any of its units.
To curtail that, I've increased the base movement of heroes slightly, but made buying additional movement points prohibitively expensive. (16 move for 4AP - if you buy this once,
heroes can keep pace with Eagles and Air Elementals, the fastest units in this mod.)
Under most circumstances, AI heroes now shouldn't spend AP on movement before they reach level 8, which should be pretty rare.
I've made some additional tweaks to hero abilities and spells, that hopefully will improve their picks, but hero behaviour and spellcasting is still one area I don't understand very well,
and for the time being, I won't be able to do much playtesting.

A change to 25th.rul - on suggestion by KGB, I've changed the negative bonus limit from -3 to -1. The AI is poor at assembling synergistic stacks, so toning down the advantage a human player can get should
keep fights from becoming too one-sided.

No changes to items. I'm happy here.

No changes to random sides. That's still on my to do list. I may be able to work on that and release the next version during the Christmas holidays.

As always, any feedback is welcome. It's been about a month, so I thought you all deserve an update.

[Hvscarl]

Hello Don,
I noticed all items are retained going into the next campaign level, was this only intended for Chapter 2 of Banewars, or is it across all maps?
Also looking at your changelog - my only other critic is that I think there should still be Elfslayer/Dwarfslayer/Gnollslayer/Orcslayer bonuses, as heroes historically had certain ones as options and provides a sort of unique counter which is oversimplified with Demonslayer/Manslayer bonuses. But I do agree with adding many of the units into the Demon category as you did

[Hvscarl]

Also I haven't tried Stormheim units yet and need to figure that out..
Played my first multiplayer match with your settings and it went well,
but we are trying to figure out how to disable simultaneous turns.
If you have any info please feel free to share.
I do think lots of your changes are cool, like trample damage for knights and things costing more.
Oh and one more thing, it seemed like Mana production was off the charts. I'm wondering if this is a bug or intended for multiplayer.
Thanks