Heroes of Might and Magic Z : Ye Gods Edition
So, in an attempt to get some inspiration and enthusiasm back, I've been doing some thought to writing up the Star Elves as a faction in the style of pretending that this game (Or at least the current/recent war), was a Heroes of Might and Magic type game.
And then I decided I should write up some base structure first in case anyone else wanted to make their own chosen race/followers as well, and because I find doing such work fun, generally speaking. (Also because, for those unfortunate enough not to know this great game, HOMM has had several rulesets in its seven game life. Resources has changed, unit tiers have changed, heroes have changed, how magic works has changed...)
Also if anyone else does make their own town/faction, this'll be a place where I can keep links to them all for ease of finding them later. (I've probably forgotten a few things as I make this, but I can always add more things as they come up.)
General Information
Units : There's been three main varieties of how units are set up in the main game line. Before Heroes IV, there were six to seven tiers of creatures, some with a single upgrade. Heroes IV changed it to only four tiers, with no unit upgrades, but each tier had two units in it. While both tier one units could be built at any location, towns had to choose between the higher tier units for what to produce. (IE, the tier 3 nature units where the unicorn and the griffon. A town that upgraded to build unicorns was unable to build the dwelling for griffons, and vice versa for the ones that made griffon dwellings.) Heroes V then went back to having only one unit a tier and seven tiers in all, but expansions offered the choice between two different upgrades for each unit, with each town only being able to produce a single upgrade. Lastly, from Heroes VI on, the tier system was utterly dropped, and instead each faction/city has three common units, three elite units, and two champion units available to it.
This is basically a long winded way of saying I liked how Heroes V did it, so I'm going to set how units work as seven tiers of units each with two mutually exclusive upgrades.
Unit Stats : Units have several different stats. These stats are Attack, Defense, Damage Range, Initiative, Speed, and Health. If you actually want to know how attack and defense effect things, look
here. Otherwise you are permitted to, like I shall, make up reasonable sounding numbers for those two stats by looking at what
other units have. Damage Range is how much damage a unit can do. If it only has one number, then each creature always does that much damage. (IE, Monster X with a Damage Range of 2 does 2 damage per Monster X unit in the Monster X stack.) Initiative is who goes first. The higher a units Initiative, the sooner in a round they get to move. Attackers win Initiative ties. Speed is how many hexes they can move in combat. Health is how much damage each unit can take.
The last two numerical values of importance are cost and Weekly Growth. Cost is how much a unit costs in both gold and other materials. (Duh. Also, not all units cost other materials. Most only cost gold.) Weekly Growth is how many reinforcements of that unit type a dwelling produces per week.
Heroes : There's been a lot of different ways heroes have worked in these games, but I'll cut short a long explanation for this section by saying that each side should have two different hero classes associated with it. One magic class and one might class. Each class should have two abilities/skills associated with that class. Instead of driving someone insane by trying to make up all the skills, instead we'll just grow the list of skills by the fact that every time someone makes a new city they're probably going to make up at least one new skill for their hero classes. And if no one else makes any cities/factions, well, at least you'll know what skills the Star Elf heroes are likely to start with!
Also if it ever matters the four hero stats are Attack, Defense, Spell Power, and Wisdom.
Magic : Iesh, this is a scary thing to look at. Almost every HOMM game has had its own magical system, and Ye Gods already has its own as well. In the interests of sanity and keeping things simple, I'm going to simply say that for use in HOMM Z : Ye Gods Edition, these are the kinds of magic units and heroes can access. Elemental (Separated up into Fire, Water, Earth, and Air schools), Illusion, Necromancy, Divine, Celestial, and lastly Eldritch for all those evil cultists out there. With nine schools, I'd really prefer not to inflate the list any more, but if anyone has a good argument for why another type of magic should be listed (Instead of just representing anything with it by giving said unit a new ability/trait) I'll... well, at least listen very closely.
Resources : Right, we'll just copy HOMM III for resources and then avoid driving ourselves nuts by trying to actually give accurate costs to everything. That said, resources are therefor Gold, Wood, Ore, Gems, Mercury, Sulfur, and Crystals.
Town Buildings : I don't really see the need to go in depth on town buildings when we can assume the basics (Mage's Guild, Marketplace, Unit Dwellings, Walls, Town Hall, and so on), are just there. That said, each town probably should have one or two unique buildings, as well as a unique wall upgrade, to help add character and playing style.
Town List (If this actually gets popular, I'll make it its own thread, but until someone else actually decides this looks fun enough to do themselves, I don't want to make a whole new thread for just the Star Elves Cavern when I asked our great Game Master if I could post the town in the OOC thread and he said yes.)
Star Elves - Chasm (Forthcoming)