Monday, September 18, 2023

Heroes 3 Updates

Here's the latest status of my AI vs AI. I've finished the Rampart series in addition to the earlier Castle series. Tower is next. Of course, because of the matrix nature, each series is one less set (using set as it's used in tennis) than the previous. There's no reason to do Rampart vs Castle if I've already done Castle vs Rampart, for instance. Tower needs to do neither Castle nor Rampart, and Dungeon—which will be next after Tower, will not need to do any of the good aligned factions. This also means that by the time I get to Cove, I'll literally have no sets left to do, and when I get to Conflux, it'll only have one set; vs Cove.


I've also decided to do a playthrough series. Each map that I do will probably take more than one video to complete, especially if I narrate/comment on it as I'm playing, the way Norovo does. I've picked the map The Battle of Daeyun's Ford, since it's a good map where there are six factions, each of them is human or com, so supposedly balanced, and the map allows for an extended period of building and exploring before you run into your enemies. If the AI "personalities" you can select are Builder, Explorer and Warrior, I'm definitely a mix of Builder and Explorer; I get the idea of having enemies, but I don't enjoy it as much as maps that maybe pit you against something more static, and you just beat it the way you beat old fashioned video game bosses.


I've also made two variations on this map. Mostly, that means that I changed some of the terrain to give me more variety, because I'd like to play the map, and post recordings of the playthrough, of all ten factions. But I'll do it as follows:

Using the HD launcher, play very traditional versions of the map with minimal extra features, except some of the quality of life features that the HD mod adds, on the original SOD version of the map. I'd play this version with the following factions:

  • Rampart as Red
  • Castle as Purple
  • Fortress as Blue
  • Dungeon as Orange.

Yes, yes... I've played the map before and because I modified it, I'm more or less familiar with the terrain. Do you like playing Super Mario Brothers levels less just because you've played them enough to know them well?

Next, I have a map where I swapped some of the terrain and decorative elements, but otherwise didn't change much. It's still an SOD compatible map in all ways, although I believe I'll play it with the Horn of the Abyss Launcher, which means random elements (like towns, creature dwellings, creatures, artifacts, etc.) could be pulled from that map. But it's still an SOD map being played with HOTA. I'll record this version with the following factions:

  • Necropolis as Red
  • Stronghold as Teal
  • Inferno as Blue

And the final version of the map is HOTA compliant; I changed some of the terrain and decorative elements again, but I specifically used, for instance, the Wasteland and Highlands terrain, which are unique to HOTA. I don't expect this to impact the map too much vs the version above, other than it will be aesthetically somewhat different, of course, and will deliberately use some HOTA elements. I'll play and record the following factions with this one:

  • Cove as Blue
  • Tower as Purple
  • Conflux as Red

As you can probably guess, among the changes I made was to convert one large grassy area where Red starts to Highlands, and one large grassy area where Purple starts to Snow. I converted, in the earlier map, Red's area to Dirt, Purple's area to Sand and Blue's area to Lava.

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