It'd be nice if more Morgawr heroes would have Fast Learner 2. Arguably, the Morgawr Hero with Fast Learner is the best admiral, general AND governor at present and.. tbh, I think the rest are just more or less underpowered.

nice mod, I buffed versatile heroes

Vacuity, сan you provide a complete list of what has been changed by this mod?

I haven't tried it yet but I like good balance game play. Side note though, does anyone find it odd that the defence command in combat is regarded as pointless or useless? I've tried looking for a mod that makes it at least do something, boosts defence, attack in place, anything. The word is that it just makes your units run around lol, aimlessly. What were they thinking?

Nicey. Always happy to see an idea resonate ^-^

Considering how useless they still are even with this rebalance, that may be a good idea.
I'm a bit busy making stuff for another game, but will definitely keep this in mind for something to come back and try when I have the time.
Cheers!

I had an idea you might wanna implement into your mod regarding versatile heroes:

Why not give them two "Tier 3" Capacities(Like Industry Efficiency 3+Army Boost 3)? This increases their powerlevel without messing up the initial design philosophy or the AI.

Hmm... Overall, my main gripes are really just the sheer amount of versatile heroes more or less diluting the pool too much. In my view, versatile heroes are basically crap. There is only a single hero with a versatile ability - the Morgawr Hero with Fast Learner, too.

Furthermore, I feel it is really... rare to see the Cultist with two gov skills. That might be fine, cause he is arguably the strongest gov in game - but that's arguable.

I'm open to discussion regarding design and balance. If you have any other questions or suggestions, come back and talk to me about it. I have reasons for my design decisions which I'm generally always happy to explain, but the goal is to make things better, not just assert dominance in the comments section.

Thanks for the answer. I agree with your points... and well, having more heroes would probably work well enough, so I''ll check that mod.

Part 1:
@MelodyFunction
In reverse order. I absolutely agree about the relative uselessness of Versatile heroes, however this is the way Amplitude has chosen to design things. It would be perfectly possible to make much more intrusive and extensive changes to the hero designs, reassigning their roles and rebalancing them to match those roles, however I'd prefer to keep the changes less intrusive.

Part 2:
You can thus see the problem with your first point: Amplitude designs each hero to have a specific function which is how the AI will try to use it; I've merely rebalanced the hero to have skills to better match that function. You are correct that the Morgawr would be better served by having an admiral than a governor in the early game however. There's no easy solution to this without making more intrusive changes. Either I change the hero's designated role or I change the starting hero (and I don't want to do that as it would involve editing additional files, increasing the odds of incompatibilities).

Part 3:
I would honestly suggest that this is a case of "deal with it," in the early game the Morgawr can still use the hero as an admiral, just not a particularly good one, but aim to unlock the hero market fairly early in order to buy a decent admiral ASAP. Against early-game Fomorians, even a hero with no army-related skills will be a great help.

Feel free to persuade me otherwise though.

For what it's worth, I strongly recommend using Heroes of Auriga which adds a fairly small number of Versatile heroes, and many, many more useful heroes, as well as Expanded Hero Market to offer a significantly expanded selection of heroes at any given moment.

NIce mod, recently played a game without it and... man, I was annoyed x)


A few things:

1. Starting Heroes:
I noticed the Morgawr one has Gov skills. However, it is actually a pretty bad idea to use that hero as a Gov, as he definitely will be an admiral.
The Cultist starting Hero is a versatile one.... But for Cultist, I think they'd much prefer to always use their starting hero as a Governor - Cultist almost need a Cultist Governor, it is always annoying to me how hard it is to get the one with actually two Gov skills.

2. Versatile Heroes
They flood the market, but... I fail to actually see their point. 90% of the time, you want a hero that actually focuses on one or the other. Versatile heroes probably only make sense on Morgawr and Forgotten. THe former usually being an admiral, which makes their capacities matter less, and the latter usually being a spy that is just pulling double duty whenever not spying.

That's the puppies! Guardians! I really haven't played in an age.

Oh I get it now... I think...

Maybe these kinds of talks will be more fruitful once I've played the game more and gotten elbow-deep into modding, which is bound to happen sooner or later. x)

Thanks again.


P.S.: Pretty sure the "Colossi" refer to Guardians (Dust Colossus, Earth Colossus etc.) and "Kaiju" (lol) refer to Urkans.

Ahh, well, if we're getting technical then pretty much everything from the bits in the skill trees, to the heroes built-in capacities, to the regular pawn-units' abilities, to the buffs that come from equipment, are all classed as unit abilities and function in much the same way from this side of the engine.
Aside from the localisation, capacity tends to be used for things like armies' movement capacity (and movement type), cities' resource extraction capacity, empires' capacity to build/recruit colossus (I've forgotten the name used for these gudgies when playing), these kinds of things. They don't get used to describe things that might be classed as a "skill" or unit ability.

Fair enough, but the weird thing is, now that I started sifting through the xml files (thanks for that btw, heh), I'm seeing that capacities are either called "Capacity" or more commonly, "UnitAbility". The terms "Skill", "UnitSkill" and "HeroSkill" always refer to heroes' skill tree skills, at least in the many places I looked.

Now I'm even more confused as to how your mod does what it does, i.e. what exactly you changed in the files... But I don't want to take any more of your time, unless you specifically enjoy the technical chat. x)

Probably because I've spent more time inside the game files than playing the game, and internally they are referred to as skills, and if you've looked at the game files, the description exactly matches the state of things inside the game. I'm more interested in an exact description of how things are for people who have a technical interest, and less interested in a figurative interpretation for people without. The former may confuse those without knowledge of the game's internal, the latter will definitely be annoyingly woolly for those with said knowledge. Even separating into a layman's description and a technical description won't help as people will read both and then be confused about the different language used therein. It would likely increase confusion, not remove it.

I think the screenshots are easily the best description, which is why I included so many of them.

Oh, I know the difference; like I said, lots of wiki reading. x)

I can't believe I've managed to miss the screenshots entirely, that's my bad (I blame sleep deprivation) but why not call them "Capacities" like the game does, to avoid confusion? Besides, "0 points in any skills" is a bit too on the nose to NOT mistake for allocated skill points, don't you think? x)

In any case, I appreciate you taking the time to explain things. :)

You're misunderstanding the idea of skills here. There are skills which you assign as a player as the hero levels up, and there are skills which the hero comes with, such as Army Initiative Boost or Dust Boost, such as you see in the screenshots. These are the skills that have been rebalanced to make the heroes a bit less over- or underpowered. The mod has no effect on the skill points that you or the game assigns to heroes upon levelling.

Unrelated: I was going through the comments and thought I have the opposite problem from yours: I can't go back to Starbound modding because EL got its claws on me. x)

...Then I realized you said Stardew Valley. Eh, close enough. Love that also. :)

"This also rebalances the quest-spawned heroes following the above principles, which in general makes them a bit more challenging than they previously were; some quest heroes had 0 points in any skills!"

Just to be clear, you're referring to heroes that we fight during quests, NOT the ones we acquire via quests, right?

I'm new to the game (did a lot of wiki delving and not enough playing, hehe), so I'm not even sure if some heroes are added to your roster after you fight them. Sorry in advance for ignorance on my part.

I'm asking because I'd hate to get a hero like, say, level 5 with all skill points already allocated.

Right, so I've checked my notes and the Haunts hero has had adjustments made. That would indicate that another mod is overwriting the changes this mod makes. Any mod adding or editing files with a filename something like "UnitProfiles[Hero].xml " is a likely candidate.

That's a pity. Can I add you to ask for tips on how to do modifications on heroes? I would like to mod Eslek Tarosh myself if possible

Please read the description: "quite a few heroes have been left untouched"
Without looking at my notes, I do not remember the details of every hero, just that every hero has been balanced to the same power level.

I have just tried and found out:

1. The mod IS compatible with ELCP as far as I can see

2. The Haunts Hero (Eslek Tarosh) is not changed. He wasn't "balanced" or some incompatibility was found

All heroes in the game (not mod-added ones) are balanced around the same power standard, yes. No one has reported any incompatibilities with the ELCP. As I said just a couple of comments below. Try it and find out for us.

Does this also "balance" the Haunts hero?

Hello. Is this mod compatible with Endless Legend Community Patch?

Big Like

Probably. Try it out and let us know.

Will this work with Community Patch?

Updated for Symbiosis DLC. Please report any issues here.

@skay24
I have no idea. Try it out and let me (and others) know.

it works with Mightier and Magicker mod??

totally understandable. lol

It's coming! I just need to stop playing Stardew Valley for long enough...

Update for the last dlc?

I like the mod, but I love the description. It is clean and well-written, ordered pefectly and without a single obsolete word

very thoughtful, great job!

So far, most of the time heroes were just like "Yeah, I guess I'll take this one, becuase he's from my faction..." as the skills they had... well... it was sort of meaningless as I never got lucky enough to get something that wasn't mix of general and governor...
I guess balancing, so in case you got only generals and want to get a governor you are not left with completly nothing... but I rather have something actually useful rather than a filler.

@Mother Night
Thank you for your kind words. I hope you've been having fun with the improved hero balance!

Thank you for this mod! I'm just about to try it out, and I will try to give you feedback on how it goes. It looks great so far, though!