Only level 1 building built. Tournament rule 2 buildings always. (Not all games need to be rushed asap to get level 7)
Alternate upgrades for each faction. (Adaptive strategy based on opponent and map)
Keep alternates at a minimum 1-2 per town
3rd upgrades for 2-3 more units
New town defs, matching terrain it appears on.
New town screens - 1 for each Terrain (EG: Snow castle)
More turret archers for a town... (forge? dungeon? enabled by a building?)
Some special buildings that give bonuses when defending against sieges are pretty useless with high hero levels?
Blood Obelisk and Glyphs of Fear of Fortress, which gives +2 Attack and +2 Defense respectively, or Inferno's Brimstone Clouds, which grants +2 Spell Power. From my standpoint, the bonuses they give are ineffective and I highly doubt that they tip the balance in any battle. So maybe it could be a good idea to change the effect of that buildings so instead of giving an unalterable +2 to an Attribute, they give a 20% bonus, so it scales with the hero's primary skills
Town artifact storage (The idea is to make the town act as an inventory of artifacts and war machines without the presence of a hero).
Statue of legion dedicated rack (like hero puppet) (This would simplify visiting hero logic and clear out corner case. EG: where same statue part could be stacked in one town with 2 heroes)
This would offer three benefits:
First, heroes can pick up artifacts and war machines without the need of a transport hero. Sometimes it might take less movement for one hero to deposit an artifact into a city and go off on his way, setting it up for another hero who would pick up the artifact several days later.
Second, I feel the Legion artifacts are a bit fiddly to work with, especially on larger maps. If the artifact was made to work from the city inventory without the need of a hero, you can just deposit it, forget about it and focus on other things.
Third, if you play on impossible, choose artifact as your starting bonus or you get it on random, you can just leave it in the city for the second hero to pick it up if you feel that hero should have it. No need for meet-ups later if they start exploring in separate directions.
The Grail is fine, just needs some balance for the "siege" stuff, since this is really worse imho...
A grail should always have an global impact... like week of the imp, seeing everything, getting all spells (nerfed with HotA to just conflux supported spells)Dungeon - global +5 Spell power, (global access to meteor shower and one free use per battle)Stronghold - global +5 Attack, (global bloodlust for all units for 50 rounds)Fortress - global +5 defense, (global shield for all units for 50 rounds)Castle - +2 Moral (global), (global mirth for all units for 50 rounds)Rampart - +2 Luck (global), (global fortune for all units for 50 rounds)
Resource Silo (all towns)
It is too expensive in terms of gold. Also you need it to build Upgraded Gorgons in Fortress. Right now in online games you almost never see them, cause it requires this building. In other towns it is also not that much better. I would reduce cost in gold from 5000 to 3500 gold. Often in online games you don't play longer than 2-3 weeks so it doesn't have much time to make up for itself. In single player doesn't really matter cause A.I. is not the best anyway. And often you already have 1-2 mines with this resource or have few towns so your money income is so big that it doesn't really matter if it cost 3000/5000/7000 or 10000
Castle
Pikemen preventive strike
_The pikemen could retaliate on the enemy unit before this unit attacks,
_Could retaliate in response to an enemy attacking an adjacent friendly unit? (good Archer guards)
Maybe alternate upgrade?
Swordsmen / Crusaders ignore 50% of physical damage in a state of defense. (Yona mod)
Archangels should be able to cast resurrection on themselves
Conflux
Make the whole faction work as initially planed with 4 equal elementals instead of progressive levels 2.3.4.5 (done in AH3M)
Revert the change of Upg. Magic Lantern requiring Magic University in order to be build
_In short, there is no more need for this change. Experimental shop can no longer be cheesed, as the guards were changed along the years. I don't think being able to cheese the Churchyard is that important and even that object takes longer to beat now thanks to the changed guards. Against other neutral guards, there is the 100 round limitation rule, so it won't be able possible to cheat super valuable items because of this rule. (Speed not important when using hero based movement)
Nerf Magic University (Conflux )
One of the best buildings in the game. Allows your heroes to learn all magic schools. In most single/multiplayer game the best spells are inside earth and air magic (not only battlefield ones like : implosion, slow, haste, meteor shower, bolt and so on.., but also adventure ones DD, town portal).
It is common strategy when you have conflux town to make all of your heroes to go visit this town in some point to make sure all them have those powerful skills.
Increase costs of buying each school for each hero. Basic cost of building stay the same. But instead of 2000 per magic school to buy, it should be 2500. Might not seem much, but if we assume that usually you buy 2 magic schools per hero (maybe sometimes 3 under right conditions) then for each hero you have to pay 5000 instead of old 4000. So additional 1000 gold for every hero. So in the end if you train 4-5 heroes , you have to spend additional 4000-5000 gold per game.
It would make Conflux a bit less powerful, even as random town found somewhere on the map (one that you build only tawvrn, mage guild and university)
Necropolis
Necromancy Amplifier - Should give information that it also transform dragons into bone dragon.
Plague Tent
Town: Necropolis
Type: Tent (not available on siege battles on attackers side)
Cost: 1000g
Inflicts the same Disease that Zombies can apply. (-2att/def for 3 turns.) Can only target living resurrectable creatures.
Disease affects speed as well? (this way zombies could catch up)
Skeleton Transformer (Necro)
Increase its cost just a bit from 1000 to 1500. It is one of best towns in game. Usually in multiplayer people are trading money at start a game to balance it more. So most people pay lots of money only to play as Necro. That's how strong it is. Starting game with low amount of money in most games. Often 1st turn is hard and sometimes you have problem to buy all / many heroes. This small increase in cost of building might make you not being able to buy lets say 4th hero. This 4th hero would collect 2 gold from map and make enough for 5th hero and so on with 6th and 7th hero. So it makes Necro start a bit harder without totally breaking it
Necromancy Amplifier (Necro) - same as above, increase cost from 1000 to 1500.
Enhance Skeleton transformer
Skeletal transformer makes 1 Black Knight (1200g) from 1 Champion (1200g).
Monks/Zealots, Enchanters, Magi/Arch Magi into Liches at the skeleton transformer.
Only Dragons transform to bone dragons (no more hydras)
Rampart
Make Gold Dragons be able to be resurrected by the LEVEL 5 SACRIFICE, which due to a bug counts as level 4 in the second part since it uses just a custom resurrection.
If Gold Dragons can be sacrificed by the spell, they just be able to be resurected too
Change Rampart Dragon Cliffs build path from Unicorn Glade + MG lvl 2 to Dendroid Arches + Enchanted Spring + MG lvl 2.
Dendroids should have vulnerability to fire
Mystic Pond (Rampart)
Leave costs same but make it give you a bit more resources. Right now it gives from 1-4 RANDOM special resource every start of the week. So it takes like more than 1 month to break even , often games end faster. Also it is random, you might get resource that you dont want all the time. Maybe 3-5 of random resource? Or 2-4 but you can choose what you want?
Fountain of Fortune (Rampart)
Hidden under Mystic Pond (that is also weak and costly building) and after you have it you still have to spend 10 crystals and 1500g to build it? What? Castle has same building (gives morale instead of luck) but it only cost 500 gold and 5 wood.
This building should cost 1000 gold + 3 crystal tops or maybe even less and not require this mystic pond
Dungeon
Mana vortex (Dungeon)
Powerful building that is dirt cheap. It not only recover all of your mana point in the second. It also doubles it. In 1.6.1 Hota even expert Intelligence gives only 50%. It works only once a week, but it is enough to boost your main hero before going to war with enemy player. Also similar to conflux you can find dungeon on map without fort and only buy 2 buildings there to get this effect. Often players are attacking some creature with their main hero and no army, only to run, buy hero in Dungeon town to res mana and later attack other random creature to run again and rebuy hero in main town or where it needs to be with double mana now. And all of it for just 1000 gold? Cost of the building should be increasedIncrease cost at 2000 gold + 2 crystals. Additional cost might make you short on buying additional hero or different building in same turn. Added also 2 crystals - this resource Dungeon doesn't need that many, but still might make building high tier guild a bit harder
Inferno
Lava terrain should get a 125% movement penalty (like Rough)
Small buff to Inferno
Pitlords could resurect Devils and Efreets (make demon farming more interesting)
5 Pit Lords resurrect 1 Devil by corrupting soul of 1 allied dead Angel, Archangel.
3 Pit Lords resurrect 1 Efreets by corrupting soul of 3 allied dead Genies, Master Genies.
Castle Gate (Inferno) - extremely costly
Also you need to build in 2 towns to make it work. In same moment you can buy just guild 4 and get town portal that allows you to teleport wherever you want , not only to inferno towns. Gold cost should be cut in half, from 10000 to 5000 gold
Brimstone Clouds - Cloud arround inferno town that decreases enemy SP and increases Inferno SP.
A transparent smoke and ashes layer arround inferno town, just like cloud of darkness
Tower
Fortress
Add a 4th level for the mage guild in the Fortress faction. There's really no reason for it to be as bad at magic as the Orcs/Barbarians.
Add regeneration to Hydras
Unique war machine Poison Tent. Casts poison every round.
Cage of Warlords (Fortress) - Why does it require so many other buildings. Stronghold has similar building that gives +1 attack instead of def, and you can build it right away day 1.
Cage needs not only town hall but also some Glyphs of Fear. So you have to spend like 2 days to get to it. In the end noone builds it. Maybe in some campaign where you have hero who goes to next map and making his/hers stats better is important. It is weakest of all similar building in different towns ( Inferno/Tower/Strong give also +1 basic attribute and they require 0 or 1 building to buildDrop Glyphs of Fear from buildings that are required. Leave town hall, to make it require 1 building like tower/inferno , and not to change to much original idea but make it somewhat useful to build
Stronghold
Freelancer's Guild - in Stronghold, it doesn't give information that with each marketplace you own, the prices for trading creature to resource is better.
Damage of Orcs / Orc-chieftains (throwing axes) depends quadratically on the distance to the target.
Sea Dog's Accurate shot should work only when having full range (too powerful in sieges at the moment)
Keeping track of golden bow and the like.
Neutrals
Nightmares (Level 6)
Lilith
Succubus (Level 4 or 5)
Scorpion (Level 4-6)
Chimera (Level 6)
Leprechaun (HotA)
Werewolves (Level 5)
Mermaid (Level 4 or 5)
Kraken (Level 7)
Ghosts like in H2, with the ability to boost their numbers from fallen units. These would make greater possibilities for maps makers. I would love to see maps where you start with one ghost and slowly make legions of them. Also ghosts could be used as really strong guards.
Global
Only level 1 building built. Tournament rule 2 buildings always. (Not all games need to be rushed asap to get level 7)
Alternate upgrades for each faction. (Adaptive strategy based on opponent and map)
3rd upgrades for 2-3 more units
New town defs, matching terrain it appears on.
New town screens - 1 for each Terrain (EG: Snow castle)
More turret archers for a town... (forge? dungeon? enabled by a building?)
Some special buildings that give bonuses when defending against sieges are pretty useless with high hero levels?
Blood Obelisk and Glyphs of Fear of Fortress, which gives +2 Attack and +2 Defense respectively, or Inferno's Brimstone Clouds, which grants +2 Spell Power. From my standpoint, the bonuses they give are ineffective and I highly doubt that they tip the balance in any battle. So maybe it could be a good idea to change the effect of that buildings so instead of giving an unalterable +2 to an Attribute, they give a 20% bonus, so it scales with the hero's primary skills
Town artifact storage (The idea is to make the town act as an inventory of artifacts and war machines without the presence of a hero).
Statue of legion dedicated rack (like hero puppet) (This would simplify visiting hero logic and clear out corner case. EG: where same statue part could be stacked in one town with 2 heroes)
First, heroes can pick up artifacts and war machines without the need of a transport hero. Sometimes it might take less movement for one hero to deposit an artifact into a city and go off on his way, setting it up for another hero who would pick up the artifact several days later.
Second, I feel the Legion artifacts are a bit fiddly to work with, especially on larger maps. If the artifact was made to work from the city inventory without the need of a hero, you can just deposit it, forget about it and focus on other things.
Third, if you play on impossible, choose artifact as your starting bonus or you get it on random, you can just leave it in the city for the second hero to pick it up if you feel that hero should have it. No need for meet-ups later if they start exploring in separate directions.
The Grail is fine, just needs some balance for the "siege" stuff, since this is really worse imho...
A grail should always have an global impact... like week of the imp, seeing everything, getting all spells (nerfed with HotA to just conflux supported spells) Dungeon - global +5 Spell power, (global access to meteor shower and one free use per battle) Stronghold - global +5 Attack, (global bloodlust for all units for 50 rounds) Fortress - global +5 defense, (global shield for all units for 50 rounds) Castle - +2 Moral (global), (global mirth for all units for 50 rounds) Rampart - +2 Luck (global), (global fortune for all units for 50 rounds)
Resource Silo (all towns)
It is too expensive in terms of gold. Also you need it to build Upgraded Gorgons in Fortress. Right now in online games you almost never see them, cause it requires this building. In other towns it is also not that much better. I would reduce cost in gold from 5000 to 3500 gold. Often in online games you don't play longer than 2-3 weeks so it doesn't have much time to make up for itself. In single player doesn't really matter cause A.I. is not the best anyway. And often you already have 1-2 mines with this resource or have few towns so your money income is so big that it doesn't really matter if it cost 3000/5000/7000 or 10000
Castle
Pikemen preventive strike
_The pikemen could retaliate on the enemy unit before this unit attacks, _Could retaliate in response to an enemy attacking an adjacent friendly unit? (good Archer guards)
Swordsmen / Crusaders ignore 50% of physical damage in a state of defense. (Yona mod)
Archangels should be able to cast resurrection on themselves
Conflux
Make the whole faction work as initially planed with 4 equal elementals instead of progressive levels 2.3.4.5 (done in AH3M)
Revert the change of Upg. Magic Lantern requiring Magic University in order to be build
_In short, there is no more need for this change. Experimental shop can no longer be cheesed, as the guards were changed along the years. I don't think being able to cheese the Churchyard is that important and even that object takes longer to beat now thanks to the changed guards. Against other neutral guards, there is the 100 round limitation rule, so it won't be able possible to cheat super valuable items because of this rule. (Speed not important when using hero based movement)
Nerf Magic University (Conflux )
Necropolis
Necromancy Amplifier - Should give information that it also transform dragons into bone dragon.
Plague Tent
Town: Necropolis Type: Tent (not available on siege battles on attackers side) Cost: 1000g Inflicts the same Disease that Zombies can apply. (-2att/def for 3 turns.) Can only target living resurrectable creatures.
Disease affects speed as well? (this way zombies could catch up)
Skeleton Transformer (Necro)
Increase its cost just a bit from 1000 to 1500. It is one of best towns in game. Usually in multiplayer people are trading money at start a game to balance it more. So most people pay lots of money only to play as Necro. That's how strong it is. Starting game with low amount of money in most games. Often 1st turn is hard and sometimes you have problem to buy all / many heroes. This small increase in cost of building might make you not being able to buy lets say 4th hero. This 4th hero would collect 2 gold from map and make enough for 5th hero and so on with 6th and 7th hero. So it makes Necro start a bit harder without totally breaking it
Necromancy Amplifier (Necro) - same as above, increase cost from 1000 to 1500.
Enhance Skeleton transformer
Skeletal transformer makes 1 Black Knight (1200g) from 1 Champion (1200g). Monks/Zealots, Enchanters, Magi/Arch Magi into Liches at the skeleton transformer. Only Dragons transform to bone dragons (no more hydras)
Rampart
Make Gold Dragons be able to be resurrected by the LEVEL 5 SACRIFICE, which due to a bug counts as level 4 in the second part since it uses just a custom resurrection.
If Gold Dragons can be sacrificed by the spell, they just be able to be resurected too
Change Rampart Dragon Cliffs build path from Unicorn Glade + MG lvl 2 to Dendroid Arches + Enchanted Spring + MG lvl 2.
Dendroids should have vulnerability to fire
Mystic Pond (Rampart)
Leave costs same but make it give you a bit more resources. Right now it gives from 1-4 RANDOM special resource every start of the week. So it takes like more than 1 month to break even , often games end faster. Also it is random, you might get resource that you dont want all the time. Maybe 3-5 of random resource? Or 2-4 but you can choose what you want?
Fountain of Fortune (Rampart)
Hidden under Mystic Pond (that is also weak and costly building) and after you have it you still have to spend 10 crystals and 1500g to build it? What? Castle has same building (gives morale instead of luck) but it only cost 500 gold and 5 wood.
This building should cost 1000 gold + 3 crystal tops or maybe even less and not require this mystic pond
Dungeon
Mana vortex (Dungeon)
Powerful building that is dirt cheap. It not only recover all of your mana point in the second. It also doubles it. In 1.6.1 Hota even expert Intelligence gives only 50%. It works only once a week, but it is enough to boost your main hero before going to war with enemy player. Also similar to conflux you can find dungeon on map without fort and only buy 2 buildings there to get this effect. Often players are attacking some creature with their main hero and no army, only to run, buy hero in Dungeon town to res mana and later attack other random creature to run again and rebuy hero in main town or where it needs to be with double mana now. And all of it for just 1000 gold? Cost of the building should be increased Increase cost at 2000 gold + 2 crystals. Additional cost might make you short on buying additional hero or different building in same turn. Added also 2 crystals - this resource Dungeon doesn't need that many, but still might make building high tier guild a bit harder
Inferno
Lava terrain should get a 125% movement penalty (like Rough)
Pitlords could resurect Devils and Efreets (make demon farming more interesting)
5 Pit Lords resurrect 1 Devil by corrupting soul of 1 allied dead Angel, Archangel. 3 Pit Lords resurrect 1 Efreets by corrupting soul of 3 allied dead Genies, Master Genies.
Castle Gate (Inferno) - extremely costly
Also you need to build in 2 towns to make it work. In same moment you can buy just guild 4 and get town portal that allows you to teleport wherever you want , not only to inferno towns. Gold cost should be cut in half, from 10000 to 5000 gold
Brimstone Clouds - Cloud arround inferno town that decreases enemy SP and increases Inferno SP.
A transparent smoke and ashes layer arround inferno town, just like cloud of darkness
Tower
Fortress
Add a 4th level for the mage guild in the Fortress faction. There's really no reason for it to be as bad at magic as the Orcs/Barbarians.
Add regeneration to Hydras
Unique war machine Poison Tent. Casts poison every round.
Cage of Warlords (Fortress) - Why does it require so many other buildings. Stronghold has similar building that gives +1 attack instead of def, and you can build it right away day 1.
Cage needs not only town hall but also some Glyphs of Fear. So you have to spend like 2 days to get to it. In the end noone builds it. Maybe in some campaign where you have hero who goes to next map and making his/hers stats better is important. It is weakest of all similar building in different towns ( Inferno/Tower/Strong give also +1 basic attribute and they require 0 or 1 building to build Drop Glyphs of Fear from buildings that are required. Leave town hall, to make it require 1 building like tower/inferno , and not to change to much original idea but make it somewhat useful to build
Stronghold
Freelancer's Guild - in Stronghold, it doesn't give information that with each marketplace you own, the prices for trading creature to resource is better.
Damage of Orcs / Orc-chieftains (throwing axes) depends quadratically on the distance to the target.
Cove
Sea Dog's Accurate shot should work only when having full range (too powerful in sieges at the moment)
Neutrals
Nightmares (Level 6) Lilith Succubus (Level 4 or 5) Scorpion (Level 4-6) Chimera (Level 6) Leprechaun (HotA) Werewolves (Level 5) Mermaid (Level 4 or 5) Kraken (Level 7) Ghosts like in H2, with the ability to boost their numbers from fallen units. These would make greater possibilities for maps makers. I would love to see maps where you start with one ghost and slowly make legions of them. Also ghosts could be used as really strong guards.
Upgrades of some neutral creatures
Satyr -> Faun: Attack 12 Defense 12 Damage 7-10 Health 40 Speed 8 Spell mirth (3 times), good morale (like Minotaurs)
Native terrains for neutral creatures:
Peasant - Grass. Halfling - Moves to Factory and becomes Wasteland in HotA. Rogue - Dirt perhaps. Boar - Dirt perhaps. Leprechaun - Grass. Nomad - Sand. Mummy - Sand. Sharpshooter - Grass. Satyr - Grass. Steel Golem - Snow. (or Sand?) Troll - Rough. Gold Golem - Snow. (or Sand?) Fangarm - Swamp. Diamond Golem - Snow. (or Sand?) Enchanter - Snow. Faerie Dragon - Highland. Rust Dragon - Wasteland or Subterranean. Crystal Dragon - Rough perhaps. (Azure should be Snow) Azure Dragon - Snow. Werewolf - Dirt. Mermaid, Sea Monster , Kraken - Sea if possible, otherwise Swamp. Succubus - Lava. Nightmare - Lava. Scorpion - Wasteland. Chimera - Subterranean.