How to make Knight's creatures more unique

Hello,

you have done an amazing job with this mod. Truly incredible work! I am a big fan of it!

Here are some suggestions to make the Knight's creatures more unique:

Swordsman - Receives less damage from enemy ranged attacks
Marksman - Deals extra damage when shooting at flying units
Pikeman - Deals extra damage when retaliating (perhaps more damage the longer the enemy creature has moved before attacking)
Peasant - You can recruit an unlimited number of Peasants. Probably imbalanced but it would be a unique mechanic

Thank you for reading. Have a nice day!

//Mr. Knight

Ah, seagull developers, long time no see.

I thank you for your interest in our mod, and I'm glad there are folks who like to think creatively. However, such ideas have been discussed and forgotten years ago.

You see, Heroes 2 was a game which didn't intend too much special abilities for each creature. Even if we stretch the concept to Heroes 3, where we could have more of these, each ability had a purpose. We cannot make unlimited peasants for this sole reason - the mod will be a mess like later WoG builds with fishing wells and other weird things going on. H3SW has a design direction. Heroes 3 had it too.

If we will see that the Knight lineup has a problem, we will make steps towards solving it. And it has plenty, but none of them can be formulated as "Knight creatures need to stand out more from each other". It's not true, it's just a matter of personal preference.
That was the very sense of Knight - to show that this is a stereotypical human feudal lord, enlisting mere humans in his army. Practice has shown that H2 atmosphere is easy to break.

With that said, Knight has problems.
- Harder to take castles because there are lack of flying units despite the profile Ballistics skill. (Intended to be solved via implemented an improved Catapult for Knights only).
- Archer/Ranger stack was too weak and was being obliterated almost instantly in the original Heroes 2 (not an issue anymore).
- Peasants are useless (not an issue in H3SW where we took the path of minimal risk and simply increased their HP).
- Over-dependence on Wood as resource leading to imbalance on some maps.
- Tavern is a prerequisite for building higher tier creature dwellings, which we might reconsider later.

If the Knight creatures will require an ability, we will try to add it. But this will be defined by the gameplay, rather than change for the sake of change.

I understand your well-formulated points. I assumed you must have all discussed stuff like this to the death. I was hestitant to even write this post because I guessed you are far beyond that point. But I just very recently found your mod and got so excited haha

I have always loved the Knight in Homm2 from the aesthetics of their creatures, but have always been sad that the gameplay is so "plain" with few special abilities (only double strike for two creatures.) But at the same time, later Heroes games goes overboard with too many special abilities. Just a few per faction is the sweet spot and I love that you have followed that philosophy overall!

Unlimited Peasants sounds stupid of course. I just like the thought of a kingdom that can muster up extra Peasants from all villages and towns throughout the land, with enough gold available... Just like the Necromancer has a unique way of producing Skeletons, it would be cool if there was a unique way of producing Peasants, to adjust for them being so bad in combat.

But hey, this doesn't really matter. Sorry for wasting your time. Please keep your vision and continue with your awesome work!

With that said, I once thought about adding some kind of property for the Pikemen so the Knight could possibly change strategy depending on who's the enemy. I am personally a fan of asymmetric gameplay like StarCraft Broodwar, and its multiplayer principles could be applied (to a little degree) to Heroes as well.

Say, there could be a situation where Knight could focus more on getting Swordsmen earlier (actually that was the case in Heroes 2 where you really could choose Swordsmen because their stack felt tougher overall, especially if the Well is built). And yet, there could also be a situation where Pikemen are more beneficial to build first because of - you name it - their hypothetical special ability.

Cases like these could usually involve abilities as one of the big tools for diverse gameplay. One ability that comes to mind is the immunity to the Jousting bonus, but it barely has use in current conditions, since that bonus belongs to a creature from the same faction.

However, there could be a possibility of adding attack/defense bonus of some kind (for example, inability to be attacked first) against four-legged creatures, of which there are plenty. This instantly hints on a bonus against Nomads and Wolves (also 3rd tier creatures, by the way, which means Knight can get an upper hand over Barbarian and Dervish early on), and also some others like Unicorns. If we include all 2-hex creatures in the list, Knight gets even a nicer bonus somewhat reminiscent of H4 Halflings' bonus against highest tier creatures. In H4 though, I never felt it helpful enough. In our case, it probably could be solving something - not only Knight feels stronger and unique in its own way, but also Pikemen feel like a more tempting choice even if taken to a non-Knight army.

With the Knight's general concept of civilized feudal faction where the main difference between forces is the equipment rather than nature (Hello, Lords of the Realm series), the atmosphere won't be hurt much after this kind of addition. The only thing to consider is that if the Knight gameplay could be really built around that.

Excellent idea to make the Pikemen deal extra damage vs creatures with 2-hexes! Sounds like a simple and unique twist to a "boring" creature that fits the theme and could (probably) easily be balanced.

I read what you wrote about adding an improved Catapult since Knight struggles to attack castles due to their lack of flyers.

I guess you have already thought about the Cyclop's ability to knock down walls in Heroes 3.

If Crossbowman could receive a similar ability, but it would of course not work in terms of flavour. (Arrows from Crossbows shooting down walls..)

So then it would need to be reworked into "Hand cannoner" or "Mortar" or something similar, as found in Age of Empires 2. Or if the Crossbowman shoots fire arrows that burns/explodes the wall... If the Knight even has gunpowder..

But it would at least make the Crossbowman more unique compared to other shooters, which is the topic of this thread

Haha I guess you are tired of backseat developers ^^

Its rather for modding tools. You can made IT using Era by scripts or upcoming fheroes2 modding options.