It might help make these high prices more achivable if it was possible to add negative effects to the weapon, like penalties to attack damage or maximum health.

@PTTG Thanks for the input! I've been thinking about upgrades exactly like that. An upgrade that's about 0.4 ~ 0.8 the cost of 'Enhanced Smithwork' and call it 'Defective Smithwork'. Maybe tiers for worse and worse effects, but costing less...

How about adding more expensive and stronger capabilities with the same ability?
For example, advanced invoke death -> soul resist 12/13/14
Value 200/350/500
Point 12/14/16 ..

Advanced breath -> more damage .. or lower cooldown

I think it is very fun to add enhanced capabilities. What do you think?

@asto1qasw1 An excellent idea, will consider.

Both things have now been implemented to some extent. Perhaps in the future there will be more content.

Edit: See the description, changenotes and pictures for details

I would love to see a physical damage resistance involved. Maybe have it set in tiers of 10. 10% physical resist, applied multiple times so the cost remains high.

Is there a specific program you use to mod Steam games? If so, what one. I've been thinking of getting into modding, but don't even know where to start.

Originally posted by 7captainjaymz7:

Is there a specific program you use to mod Steam games? If so, what one. I've been thinking of getting into modding, but don't even know where to start.

@7captainjaymz7

The tools for modding for AoW3 are available through the game launcher. From the launcher you go to the "user content"-tab -> "Package Manager" -> "File" -> "New" -> "Launch mod editor" and then just start fiddling around with rpk files in the game folder.

Note that there are 2 other editors for AoW3 as well.
1. Next to package manager called: "Age of Wonders 3 Editor" where you can make your own scenarios and whatnot.
2. "Content Editor" which you can access through the Package Manager, where you would likely spend time if you create resources for the game, like new skinned units etc.

For some games, like XCOM2, you need to download a separate program that is available for free on the steam "Tools" tab.

Some games are easier to mod than others. AoW3 is from the easiest end, where you don't need any coding/scripting knowledge to get started with your mods. XCOM2 and Skyrim are more advanced, in that most mods require you to dive deep into the files or have some basic coding knowledge.

Anyway, just open the editor and look around. Refer to the official guide to get started with some simple mods like making small changes or adding modified duplicates of already available resources like heroes or something. Making heroes for AoW3 is an extremely simple process FYI.

Just throwing a suggestion out there - maybe there are new race-specific properties you could tack on. EG "Draconian/Dwarven/Elven-forged <whatever>"...that grant bonuses either to appropriate units of that race in the stack, or to Heroes of that race (I have a mod that adds racial modifiers to Heroes which was apparently missing)

Sounds like a good idea, thank you for the request. I will keep this in mind once I start working on the mod again.

I've done some smaller projects in the past month, but I'm not going to work on these old ones until later this year. So don't expect an update anytime soon, but please keep the requests and ideas coming.

No worries, and thanks again for your sharing your work.

Re: balance discussion about unachievable mana cap requirements, too high costs in general.

Thanks so much for replying to me on the front-page discussion! I really appreciate it.

My main balance request would be: "don't think in terms of mana cap anymore." In an actual game, you shouldn't be thinking "When will it be *possible* for me to make this item." But "when will it be *worth it*". When does this item become more valuable to my war effort than the next building, the next unit, the next fortress. Basically think of the *opportunity cost* of an item. Compare the power of an item to a Grand Palace (350 vanilla; 550 in Empire Building mod) that gives more casting points globally. Is this item as powerful as that to justify a cost of 350-550? A Quick Learner helm probably isn't, so Quick Learner should cost less than that. Compare the item to a stack of units with the same cost. Is this more powerful than a full stack of Tier 2 units (~600 total gold+mana; 6 turns to build)? Better than a full stack of Tier 3 units (~1000 total gold+mana; 12 turns to build)? Almost no single item is really better than a whole stack of Tier 3 units - that's like the upper bound of that thought experiment. 1000 resources / 10 turns of forging should be the most any single-ability item ever costs.

Aside: Maybe giving Life-Drain and Total Awareness to a level 20+ Warlord is better than a whole stack of Knights; that's a special case. :) However, Regrowth on that same Warlord instead of Total Awareness is likely still not worth 1000 resources - the 6 knights will probably flank and kill him despite his regen.)

My suggestions:
1.) Reduce costs overall by a significant amount. Even the most insane ability should only cost about 1000 gold+mana combined. Total Awareness should cost that much. But if it's not part of a build that makes your hero literally invincible, then it's not really worth 1000+ resources. Giving a Hero Fire Cannon, for instance, is fun/cool but not game-breaking. A High level hero is generally already better than a cannon. I wouldn't pay 1000 for a Fire Cannon usable item.
2.) For high-cost abilities, shift cost from mana to gold. Abilities up to 7-8 points shouldn't ever cost more than 800 mana total (including the 2-3 extra points you have to buy), even if it means also costing 800 gold. Most players value gold over mana anyway and gold has no limit to worry about.
3.) The cost balance between abilities themselves and "extra points" should be mostly toward the abilities themselves (like 80/20 perhaps). An extra point of "space" in an item should cost perhaps 100 mana, IMO and certainly nowhere near 1000. So you'll start running into mana cap problems and wishing you were a dwarven sorcerer only if you are trying to make items with *multiple* abilities. For "usable" items that you have plenty of inventory slots for anyway, the powers themselves should probably be like 95% of the cost and the extra points like 5%. (I'd pay maybe 75 extra mana to get my longbow and musket combined into the same item to save an inventory slot, but not more than that - that's 15 mana per point.)

Just my opinion. Thanks for making and sharing great mods!

@jancomx

Hey, I like your view on balancing.

I will probably balance all the added abilities etc within the 5-point boundaries (lower the 6-9 points to 5) very much how you have described in terms of production cost and leave the "enhanced smithwork" cost relatively high.

Let me reply to your suggestions one by one:

1. Yes, you're correct the costs need some heavy-handed cutting. I will consider what you've written here.

2. Here lies THE problem. Doing that is simply impossible in the editor. The gold and mana costs are tied to the same value. I don't think we would be discussing the cost balance if this wasn't the case.

I know the cost for mana is 2,6 times the value from my excel sheets, but I don't remember the exact modifier for the gold cost. I think it was 0,35 or something close to it.
Say I give an ability a value of 100. That ability would cost about 35 gold and 260 mana to make.
So if I wanted something to cost 800 gold it would also cost close to 6000 mana.

Why I've tried to "balance" the abilities on mana cap is exactly because mana is valued less in many cases and the gold costs are very much negligible when creating items.

3. The use-items aren't a problem. The problem in balancing rather lies in having multiple small abilities too easily that stack. Like putting all elemental defences on a shield, armor and boots etc. and also other stuff on top of that for a pittance. Hence I will probably keep the extra point costs relatively high and focus on balancing within the 5-point boundaries first and perhaps only have the Tiered abilities outside of it. So that additional or higher tier abilities will still be relatively expensive, while not locking out any single ability. Does this make sense in your view?



You are very welcome. And thank you for taking the time to comment and make suggestions.

Ahh, the gold/mana ratio in cost is hard-coded, that makes sense now. That's a bummer, but not the biggest problem - it's the "hammers"(build time) that make the biggest difference.
Here's my current musings in the form of two lists - one of things I think should be expensive/difficult (but mostly not impossible) and one of things I'd like to see *not* be restricted and even encouraged.

1.) Mind control in general.
a. Mind control is dumb, items with mind control powers are dumb. Solution: Tempted to say you should just take all mind-control powers out of the forge entirely, but that’s just my bias probably.  Just make sure they are all expensive.
2.) Stacking Def/Res to the sky.
a. Solution: Increase cost of direct stat boosts somewhat and have extra points cost ~100 each. +1 Def is 65+2 points and +1 Res is 81+3 points. If both those low base costs were increased to ~125, then getting one “extra” point of Def for 325 or Res for 425 would be totally fine. ~3 extra turns of a metropolis’s time for +1 to a stat is not OP.
3.) Total Awareness + Tireless + Drain Life. This is possible in Vanilla, except that Total Awareness is missing (have to be a Rogue). Solution: Make Total Awareness by itself an expensive thing to get (Like 1000/5 points, or 800/7points if points are 100 each). Potentially make Life-stealing/Drain-Life more expensive and/or make other things you can put on a weapon better/cheaper to compete with it.
4.) Stacking up movement buffs/haste/athletics with extra-long range attacks to be able to kite normal enemies on the battle map.
a. Not something you see in vanilla or expect. So why mention it? Because crazy OP stuff should be *possible* even if it’s difficult/expensive. Like if it’s possible, to make +4 movement a repeatable buff on Legs or Jewels that would be amazing. Movement is also one of the very, very few item power that has some benefit on the strategic map as well as in battle.
5.) 100% Resistance to Everything except physical
a. Solution: Make getting this a tricky and expensive puzzle.
DESIGN IDEA:
“Lesser” 20% protection is non-stackable and 2 points (like vanilla) but not available on every item. Total cost ~100, just like vanilla.
“Greater” 40% protection is also non-stackable and 2 points but only available on one type of item. Total cost ~250.


So an item with both lesser resistances and the greater resistance for that slot would be 6 points and come to 100+100+250+(1 extra point). If the extra point is ~100, then that’s a ~550 total-cost item that does *nothing* except strongly resist one element and slightly resist another. Get 4 of these, and combine with jewels/mount to round out the last 20% of each resistance, and you get your “immune to all elemental damage” set, but have no room for +defense or anything else that doesn’t come on a weapon unless you invest hundreds more into extra points. For 15+ turns of your metropolis’s time, you have something cool that only breaks the game if put on the right hero in the right situation. That seems pretty balanced to me.


1.) Combat summons that go away after combat.
2.) Powerful offensive abilities that are usable once per battle or have a long cooldown, especially AOE.
3.) Powerful support abilities, or anything that makes heroes better at their leader role rather than just encouraging them to chase the dream of leaving their friends behind and becoming an unstoppable tank/1-man army.
4.) Abilities that only take effect after/outside of battle (Resurgence, Quick Learner, Volunteer).
5.) Abilities that buff your whole stack.
6.) Abilities that boost spellcasting or have very long range (thus allowing a hero not to need super-high defenses to be effective).

@jancomx

Thanks for the ideas. I made a quick reference for myself of the vanilla forge upgrades in Excel and I noticed the costs range from 12 to 100 "value" in the editor, which translates to a total of 325 production. The multipliers are as follows: 0,65 for gold and 2,6 for mana. (I previously remembered gold incorrectly)

There were 7 abilities with the highest value (100), those were Static Shield (and other auras except fire), Fearsome, Exploit Despair and Inflict Weakness.

Things like Dominate, Seduce, Life Drain and Life Steal range from 65 to 40 in "value". Mind control is surprisingly cheap in Vanilla.


These are the things I’m considering right now:

1. Changing the quest completion reward from -20% cost to -5% cost. Total for dwarven racial upgrade+quest is then -38,25% when calculated together. With the -20% Dwarves could go as far as -48% in cost.

2. Since the abilities unavailable in the Forge have been left out for a reason, I think every ability except extra points should have a value of >100. I’ve thought of doing them in the range of 100 to 200 with a few exceptions in the range of 200 to 300 (eg. Swallow Whole). And some self-made/tiered/more powerful abilities up to the maximum of value 385 which equals 1251 production (1001 mana).

3. A separate stackable -5 points “Extra Ability” upgrade for use items, as -1 points is useless for them. The values for Extra Ability, Enhanced Smithwork and Defects T1, T2, T3: 30, 45, 30, 15, 5 respectively.

4. Try to remove the Stacking problem from normal abilities by:
Revising the way I’ve implemented abilities in the forge as altered copies. Instead I will try to make them in a way that it is a “hidden ability” that gives you the exact vanilla ability it’s supposed to. For example currently you can stack forged Regrowth with Regrowth from Vanilla items or hero abilities. For Tiered abilities fixing this is not possible. They will always stack.

5. As I’ve mostly just added these abilities while I made new items for the quest rewards, I think I should now separate the forge abilities and redo them like mentioned in point 4 and also limit them into item types that make sense. Swallow Whole locked to helmet/weapon, Quick Learner to helmet/jewel etc.

6. Attach a +25 morale boost to Enhanced Smithwork to discourage exploiting. And lower the morale penalty from defects to -25, -50 and -75 from -100, -200 and -300, or remove it completely as I imagine the other lowered stats are penalizing enough.

7. Changing Vanilla forge abilities and choosing between balance and compatibility:

- Balance: Change some of the vanilla abilities to balance them with the possibility of having extra points in mind (stacking defense etc. like you mentioned) Compatibility will be compromised, but that is in this case a bit vague, as I have no clue which mods would change upgrades like defence +1 etc. that the forge uses.

- Compatibility: This is what the mod does right now, except the abilities are direct copies and thus stackable. Like I mentioned above.

8. Elemental Resistance upgrades. I’m not sure I want to touch this, as you can already do 80% everything in the forge right now if you can do extra points as well. Also hero abilities and Vanilla items already give high bonuses so messing with the forge on this point could be bad.

9. Instead of removing mind control or changing the prices for it, I was thinking of a way to counter it by implementing stack abilities in the forge that you can put on a jewel or something, that will make some units immune to mind control. I haven’t checked yet if I can manage this, but I’ll have to see. If it works, it will have to be expensive.

10. Movement upgrades. Yes, thank you. Totally great idea. Not sure of how to implement yet, but stacking could prove to have some problems with kiting for too cheap. Perhaps in 3 tiers +4, +8 and +16 for a total of +28. Maybe a stackable one with a heftier price. Not sure yet.

11. Race-specific leadership stack bonuses in forge. For jewel/helmet perhaps, maybe armor. Perhaps even anti-mind-control auras mentioned in previous list point 9. Of course any race can build them. But you probably want to build for your own race(s). Idea from dhraiden.

12. Probably non-stackable Physical Resistance +20% upgrade(s) for Chest and Shield. Idea from Digital Joy, but I’d like to keep to the 20%-rule from Vanilla.

13. More tiered abilities. Probably costing 25% more than the previous tier or something like that. Not sure yet, but I’d like to dump the idea of having to get extra points when having 1 ability and instead up the costs. Idea from asto1qasw1.


Now. I have a question for you jancomx or anyone else who uses this mod and is reading this. Should I just ditch my idea of maximum compatibility and just dive into balancing this thing? I’m really unsure as to how much compatibility matters to people using this mod.