era_gaming_mods/Advanced Classes Mod

Advanced Classes Mod 1.094

A Mod by Perry R, for Heroes of Might and Magic 3, ERA3
with the help of AlfWithCake, anti-victor, Daemon_n, Sandris, Berserker and Archer
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CONTENTS
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1. Main Features
2. Important Informations
2.1 Brief Overview of the most important changes
3. How to play this mod?
4. Maybe frequently asked questions
5. Known Bugs
6. Credits
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1. Main Features

Advanced Classes Mod is a huge gameplay improving modification based on the Wake of Gods. The core of the mod is a new class and skill system for Heroes 3. To avoid bugs neraly the complete WoG mod has been rewritten. Making ACM very stable.
Now it is possible to play three very distinct classes, each with their own strengths and weaknesses.

- New Master and Grandmaster level for every Secondary Skill
- Greatly improve the usefulness of weaker skills
- 3 main Hero classes (Warrior, Mage and Adventurer)
- 3 completely new hybrid classes (Battlemage, Hunter and Druid)
- New unique abilities for every class at the highest level
- Reworked nearly all Hero specializations, including creature, spell and adventurer specialists
- Reworked Primary and Secondary skill point chance at level up for each class
- Completely reworked the Magic-System, now all spells scale with Spell Power and much more
- New Master and Grandmaster level for every combat spell, with new effects and powers
- Reworked Commander abilities, they are now much more combat active and actually fun to use
- 9 new base Commander classes and 18 specialisations, each with unique abilities
- Most artifacts are improved and are part of a set with interesting bonuses
- Added 3 new secret class sets
- New settings for increased difficulty of Neutral Units and computer players (AI)
- Good compatibility with WoG options


2. Important Informations

- The Help and Readme folder contains a lot of additional information about heroes, spells and skills. If you are in doubt how a skill work you can look it up there. All ingame options provide additional information when right-clicked ingame.
- Right and left-click on Hero Portrait in hero-screen will show you important information about your current class points and skills, which determine your hero development. Use this often!
- Right click the experience icon in the hero-screen will open the bonus-list, it will show you a lot of additional information about hero attributes and commander classes.


2.1 Brief Overview of some important changes or difference to WoG mechanics

Heroes:
- most heroes specializations have been reworked and significantly improved in their usefulnes, especially magic heroes, there are also some new and unique specialities. Every hero should now be "mainable". Speciality scaling per level decreased to 3% instead of 5%. Some heroes have changed starting secondary skills to better match their speciality.

Artifacts:
- new unique effects for unused are boring artifacts added, also introduced new artifact sets. Set boni dont require the complete set anymore, however the strongest boni still needs the complete set. Also changed to class of several artifacts. Dont forget to read the artifact description.

Warmachines:
- cleaned up the mess with the buggy Warmachine scripts 1,2,3. Now only 1 Warmachine of each type and no more 20 Ballistas nonsense. Functionallity of WoG Warmachine scripts I-III are included, just interpreted in a new way.
Tents now resurrect in combat but have a limited heal power called "Heal Capacity". Heal Capacity is indicated by the "damage" value from your tent during combat and is 2% of your total army HP + other bonuses. Ammo Carts and Ballistas are improved and can be upgraded. You can buy over 20 unique upgrades for your WM in the towns. The upgrades are devided in "Enchantments" which can be bought at the Mage Guild and "Upgrades" which can be obtained at the Blacksmith.

Spells:
- by far the most work went into the rework of the magic system. Now all spells scale with spell power! The strength of your spells is dependant of your characters Magic Strength (MS), a new primary stat introduced in ACM. Caster heroes are now clearly better spellcasters than a Tazar with Earth Magic. Reduced the power of the Slow spell and moved to level 3. Spell point costs increased. Mulitcasting in the same battleround will increase spell point costs until the next battleround.

Commanders:
- disabled most of the old WoG commander features and remade them. Commanders now require at least 1 point in Magic skill to be able to cast. Spells are made much more useful, read description. All Commanders now profit from carring out actual attacks in combat, some can even increase their damage or health permanently by killing whole squads.
- When doing your first kill in combat you can choose a commander class. Each class has different attributes, that can be viewed by right-clicking the experience icon in the hero screen and the additional right click on the commander class text field.
- when reaching a certain kill count with your commander you can choose a new class, that usually specialises in a certain ability

Eagle Eye:
- Spells are now learned directly in combat and you get permanent spell power. And some more goodies are on this skill.

Luck/Morale:
- Morale now cappes at +6, each point of Morale increases you chance to gain extra move by ~3%. Luck increased to +6 max but damage scaling for Luck>6. Chance to land a lucky hit is capped by 15%. At some point only the damage of your Luck hits will increase. Check out the new window in the Heros Screen.

Diplomacy:
- Reworked complete skills. Now gives a chance to attract creatures from your actual army, you can directly hire them for an increased price. This makes Diplomacy more useful and predictable, also it cannot happen that a random free join of thousands neutrals give you an insta win.

Fire Shield:
- Returned damage is now additionaly dependant on your Spell Power and can exceede the original damage amount, this gives much more tactical depth to this spell. Some creatures are now immune to Fire Shield, like Dragons and other fire affinite units. Fire Shields that are passivly granted due to SE or other abilites will just return 20% damage.

Summoning Elementals:
- HP of summons is now dependant on your MS, also summons can grant buffs to your army while alive on the battlefield. Summoing Air is available early but therefore very weak.

Navigation:
- Skill deleted and replaced with Nobility skill. Nobility can increase creature growth in towns once per week.

Creatures stats and Town lineups
- no changes were made to creatures or towns. I'll leave that to other mods.


3. How to play this mod?

Just play a normal H3 game but it is recommended to decide early on which class your hero should reach. If you play the standard 8 secondary skill game, you need 35 points to reach Master Class and 58 points for Grandmaster, but you can always check.
Each Master skill gives 2 class points! Master and Grandmaster skills can only be learned if you are M/GM in that class.
To do this check your class points often and calculate how many points you get from secondary skills to reach a certain class. Check your progression/class points after every hero level up.
Please check the Readme about AI difficulty before game start. It is recommended to skip Difficulty settings in your first game to get used to the mod.


4. Maybe frequently asked questions

- Which WoG settings can I use?
Answer: Feel free to use any setting you like. There are no specific ACM settings you need to activate. Incompatible settings are mostly disabled. If some setting is not working please report, so it can be fixed.

- Why is this particular WoG or ERA scripts option blocked by the Advanced Classes Mod? And how can I restore it?
Answer: Browse to Heroes3/Mods/Advanced Classes Mod/Data/s and check the 80 wog - disable options.erm file. Each option has a brief explanation as why it is disabled. If you want to enable it nevertheless you must delete both entries in the file. There are always two.

- What damage does my Artillery do, how much will my Tent heal in combat? How much Magic Pierce has my hero? What is my total magical crit chance? How can I check the new stats of my commander?
Answer: Right-click on the Experience icon in your hero screen. Most numbers are displayed there. Some fields offer even more details when right-clicked, like commander class.

- Why can't I level up some skills to Master?
Answer: You dont have enough class points to get offered Master level for that skill. Check your current class points and level.

- What happens if I learn a secondary skill and later forget it? Will I keep all bonuses?
Answer: No. When you unlearn secondary skills, you will lose M/GM level and maybe even drop out of your current class.

- Right-Click on the Kingdom Overview
Answer: The poor Kingdom Overview will show your income including your spendings of the previous day. So keep that in mind, numbers might be negative if you spend more then you have income. The money calculation is done at the moment of your click, so do it early in your turn.

- There are many new effects on artifacts, spells and skills, how the they scale? I want to do the math!
Answer: Nearly all new effects have a scaling of some sort. Check the information window by right-clicking the experience icon. In the bonus list you can find even more information if you right-click on the left side on the spell section. Also check out the help and readme files for skills and spells. They are up to date and formulas can be found there.

- During combat troops deal zero damage. I better report that a dozen times in Discord hehe
Answer: Carefully read your artifact description. Some artifacts or the Druid class have the ability to block a flat amount of damage. The amount of damage block is small and will be irrelevant at later stages of the game.

- What happens if I play with more then 10 secondary skills?
Answer: You can try, but ACM does not support it. With more than 10 skills it will be much easier to reach several classes at once, making very strong heroes. Overall should work, but I dont know what happens. If you want to try use the ERA scripts option to allow more secondary skills.

- I want to learn all secondary skills to Master and Grandmaster regardles of my current class!
Answer: Check out the new game mode made by Berserker. Activate it at map start.

- With Berseker option I can learn all skills to Master and Grandmaster regardless of my class okay, but can I get rid of the whole class system? I dont want to play as Hunter, Druid and other shit.
Answer: Yes use the Berserker option in combination with the "select class" option. When you first get asked to promote to a class, choose "Never ask again", this will disable any class for this hero.

- What does Magic Strength do?
Answer: It is a new stat for mainly caster Heroes which ensures that they are realy better casters than Warrior Heroes. The power of some spells now depend on your MS and not on your Spell Power. 1 SP equals 1 MS, also several secondary skills give you MS. - Magic Strength scaling factor for big and small maps (XXL-Maps 80%, XL-Maps 85%, L-Maps 100, M-Map 110% S-Maps 120%, this ensures somewhat similar power of spells on all map sizes)

- I really like the Spell Trainer option but I think the damage increase per level is to low, can that be changed?
Answer: Yes, in the erm file just search for damage increment and change for example from 1% to 5%. Now each level up for damage spells will give you +5% damage.

- Can I use THIS or THAT mod together with AC Mod?
Answer: Most probably yes, just try it out. What usually happens is that skill descriptions are overwritten, but in most cases the effect will still work/apply.

- I have seen pictures of new cool Upgrades and even Enchantments for Warmachines. How can I aquire them?
Answer: For Upgrades right-click Blacksmith in town, for Enchantments right-click your Mage Guild.

- The game is now too easy/difficult now -_-
Answer: I gave you all the options to tune difficulty to your likings, just check the readme what each option does. So if your game is to easy, ramp up the difficulty.

- I saw you increased Offense damage from 30% to 31% and Eagle Eye now deals damage before the combat LOL, also you disabled my favorite WoG option ROFL, isn't your mod a completely fail?
Answer: If you asked these questions maybe its time you start modding your own game. This modification is a product of several years modding Heroes 3 WoG. I tried to keep all fun mechanics which WoG gave us but some of them have to be disabled because they are simple OP and make it impossible to deliver a coherent mod as a whole.
Examples are the "Warmachine scripts", the "Hero Specialisation script", the "Commander Abilities" and some "artifact and secondary skills scripts". I have rewritten all of the mentioned scripts from scratch, tuned them down and added new stuff which I think is better than the originals. If you cannot live without with one of the options disabled you can kindly ask and I will "reenable" them for you.

- LOL Perry this Battle Commander option is a joke I always have to reload and the Battle Reward option makes the game to easy.
Answer: Well nobody foces you to use these options. They have a scaling which depends on your hero level and army power, so they should never be to strong or to weak. Battle Commander is doable and a nice addition in my opinion.
Did you know that you can disable the Battle Commander option during your game by right-clicking the system icon menu, make new settings and disable the Battle Commander, and after the fight you can again make new settings to enable it again. Problem solved.

- I activated the "Grwoth Beyond 4000" option and now I face 20k Peasants which I cant defeat and finish my map, any idea?
Answer: well well you are a noob! Right-Click System option Icon on Adventure screen. Make new settings. Disable the "Growth Beyond 4000" option. Fight the (now only) 4000 Peasants. After that fight activate the option "Growth Beyond 4000" again, problem solved.

- What is the Warrior class?
Answer: Good understanding of combat tactics and strategies the warrior itself increases the damage of his troops with his great combat knowledge. He also boasts the morale and luck of his troops. On the highest ranks, his troops will do insane damage with attacks.

- What is the Mage class?
Answer: The mage boost the stats of his creatures with strong defense spells. By studying all elements he has access to powerful combat spells which he can cast several times to destroy his enemies. Fight the mage as soon as you can or his magic will become unstoppable.

- What is the Adventurer class?
Answer: Adventurer: The adventurer is a swift explorer and no one is faster than him. He strengthens the hit points of his troops in combat and with his knowledge of first aid and spiritual magic he will resurrect his fallen troops after every fight. He is also excellent in managing his kingdom. On grandmaster level, his army will outnumber any other army in Erathia.


Additional Infos about integrated mods can be found in the mod folder eg. like changes to Starting Heroes, Neutral and AI Difficulty, Spell Changes! some formulas (later) and more...
Please deactivate all of my other "Enhanced Magic Skills" mod, they are all integrated.
The mod is intended to be played with only 8 hero secondary skills. If you want to play with 10 I recommend Igriks 10 Sec Skills Mod, if you use that please DEACTIVATE Secondary Skill Scrolling Mod. Playing with 10 skills makes it easier to reach Class Ranks, but points will be adjusted.


5. Known Bugs:
- Wells will show incorrect amount of Spell Points recovered
- perhaps some more, please report in the ERA Modding Discord server

6. Credits
-Whole Heroes Community for support .
-Berserker for creating ERA, without him the mod would not be possible.
-AlfWithCake and anti-victor as team members.
-Daemon_n for testing and super translation into Russian language! Community support and designing the Difficulty Mod.
-Archer for support, fixes coding and help in the chinese community.
-Sandris for amazing pictures for class skills and Warmachine upgrades pictures.
-Sagamosa Mod for inspiration and graphics.



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