Songs of Conquest - HOMM2-inspired turn-based strategy adventure game

[Feyd Rautha]

If I'm standing on a couch (elevated) I must be more easily targeted by a ranged attack than if I'm standing behind it, under it or even beside it?

 

[lukaszek]

cant you see that one you are comparing elevation versus cover?

 

[ArchAngel]

If I'm standing on a couch (elevated) I must be more easily targeted by a ranged attack than if I'm standing behind it, under it or even beside it?

And you do understand that standing on a couch is not really considered as elevations. And that elevations shown in the game are not how it really looks? It represents a cliff or something or a high rock, not standing on a box.

 

[Feyd Rautha]

Yeah from how it is presented in the game it really looks like you are presenting yourself to the world by standing up there. But I take your point that I have to imagine some sort of cover that blocks line of sight for ranged units. Or that the elevation is so high so people on the ground can't make you out.

 

[Feyd Rautha]

Have they considered having the Wielders on the battlefield like the Heroes in HoMMIV? I would like that.

 

[Feyd Rautha]

New update. What do you think?

Changelog

Full Changelog / Patch notes for v0.79:


Additions

• Random map generator – choose the layout you want to use when selecting map in lobby
• Added configurable turn timers as a new map settings option for multiplayer games
• Added a multiplayer settings menu available to the host in multiplayer games
• Added ability to purchase troops from all owned towns and settlements at once when using a Rally Point
• Added Japanese translation
• Added a few more random events for Loth
• Two new skirmish maps added
  • Eye for an Eye, small 1v1 map
  • Lion’s Den, XL map with 8 players

Gameplay changes

Game has had a balance overhaul, there will be more ongoing changes and then another bigger one after all traits and abilities are in place.


Balancing

• Adjusted research prices for a more standardized price setting across all factions
• Added +5 initiative to Steampipers song “The Coin in my Hand”
• Units changes
  • Reworked initiative across all units
  • Increased HP across all units
  • Max researched stack size lowered for Militia, Rats, and Hunters
  • Faey rager now gives Chaos, Chaos, Creation
  • Fist of Order now gives Order, Order, Chaos
  • Fist of Orders max damage increased by 1 to 25
  • Faey Noble and Queen's damage increased to 14-18 and 25-30
  • Toxicologist now costs 250 gold, Bane costs 500
  • Banes damage lowered to 4-8
  • Necromancers now cost 750 gold and 1 Celestial Ore
  • Necromancers max dmg increased to 12
  • Scavenged bones now cost 850, Blessed bones cost 1200
  • Bones stack size increased to 10, with research 15
  • Scavenged Bones damage lowered to 14-16 and Blessed Bones 18-20
  • Legions and High Legions damage increased to 30-35 and 40-50
  • Dreaths max damage increased from 4 to 5 and Dire Dreaths damage increased to 5-7
  • Dire Dreath now gives an additional Chaos
  • Dire Dreath price increased to 300
  • Tinkerers stack size decreased to 15, with research 30
  • Tinkerer now cost 400 and artificers 650
  • Artificers damage lowered to 9-12
  • Scarred Brute now costs 1200
  • Scarred Brutes damage increased to 20-24
  • Shadow now costs 1000 and 1 Glimmerweave
  • Sassanid researched stack size lowered from 25 to 20
  • Sassanid damage increased to 15-20
  • Shadows minimum damage lowered by 1 to 25
  • Hellbreath and Hellroars damage increased to 25-35 and 40-50
  • Hellbreath price increased to 1600 and 1 Celestial Ore
  • Hellroar price increased to 2200 and 2 Celestial Ore
  • Guard stack size increased to 30, 50 with research
  • Guard and Protectors max damage increased by 1
  • Guard cost increased to 250
  • Crawlers damage increased to 8-10
  • Crawlers cost increased to 450
  • Adult Crawlers damage increased to 12-16
  • Adult Crawlers cost increased to 700
  • Chelun damage lowered to 12-14
  • Chelun Elders damage lowered to 16-20
  • Dragons damage increased to 40-50
  • Elder Dragons damage lowered to 50-70
  • Dragons cost lowered to 2500 + 2 Ancient amber
  • Elder Dragons cost lowered to 3000 + 4 Ancient Amber
• Note:
  Many units still do not have the trait or ability they’re supposed to have, so more changes might come when those arrive in the game.
• Spell changes
  • Protection cost lowered to 4 Order
  • Aggression cost lowered to 4 Destruction
  • Increased the cost of the following spells: Quicken, Invigorate, Onslaught, Justice, Rapid Fire, Rejuvenation
  • Fireball damage increased to 35/70/100
  • Invigorate now gives +5/10/15 Initiative, +1/2/3 move. Was +10/15/20 Initiative, +1/2/3 move
• Building prices and prereqs reworked across the board to be a bit more synergistic and adjusted to troop income worth
• Wielder changes
  • Starting troops adjusted and changed according to new prices
  • Starting skills changed and adjusted in some cases
  • Specialties changed and adjusted here and there
• Skill changes
  • Positioning now gives 15 ranged resistance, then 30 and the final tier gives +1 move first round
  • Prepared now gives +10 initiative and +1 move first round at tier 3
  • Impressive now gives 10/15/20% more chance of hostiles either fleeing or joining
  • Raider tier 3 now gives 400 bonus gold and +1 movement and +1 view radius
• Skirmish and campaign maps updated with some different army values and pickups based on the balance changes

Battlegrounds

• Fixed wrong team color on defender in post battle menu
• Disabled turn timers when playing Battlegrounds by friend invite
• Twelve more wielders added for use in Battlegrounds
• Old battlegrounds armies may now be invalid because of price changes

UI

• Rework wielder/building interaction menus into 3 separate menus (town interaction, rally point and troop building menus)
• Updated New Round/Your turn popup
• Minor additions to purchase wielder menu (Better Barya portrait positioning, more info on owned wielders, always show command skill, hide purchase button on owned wielders)
• Show town name instead of "city" in pre battle menu if no wielder is present
• Added specific beacon icon to notification HUD
• Removed positions that are under fog of war from a wielder’s movement outline

AI Adventure

• Performance optimisation
• Fixed bug that stopped the AI from claiming certain neutral faction buildings
• Fixed an issue where AI could not sell buildings
• Made long distance pathing be more precise
• Fixed issue with valuable items not being cleared from cache after interaction, creating what appeared to be pathing issues
• Fixed issue with distance-to-item penalty calculation
• Fixed issue with balancing troops when taking from map entities
• Improved situation where AI previously would stop building on its towns

AI Battle

• Fixed abandoning its current position for an inferior one due to not treating it as a valid candidate
• Fixed ranged units using the movement logic for melee units
• Fixed ranged units not evaluating damage done to enemy units correctly if an attack was preceded by a move
• No longer makes sub-optimal moves after a good one due to still having movement left
• Better at adapting to current situation compared to blindly going for its long term target
• Ranged units locked in a zone of control now consider a melee attack
• Ranged units less interested in moving to within deadly range as part of an attack to encourage attacking without moving and without penalty
• Removed threat from positions an ranged enemy unit could target only by moving
• Increased value of high ground when evaluating potential positions

Audio

• Added sound when Sim turn is locked
• Rework and update turn timer sound effect

Bug fixes

• Fixed “You can go back and level up later” mini tutorial showing up at wrong times
• Fixed auto-equipping “Any Hand” artifacts replacing main hand weapon even if the Wielder has no artifact equipped in off hand
• Fixed bug where camera panned to wielders teleporting in fog
• Fixed many instances of sounds and VFX playing for entities that where covered by fog-of-war
• Fixed artistic color tints showing up as interactable in-game
• Solved at least some cases of players getting stuck on loading screen when other players disconnect during loading
• Fixed issue with Bandit Hideout battle map causing exceptions and soft locks when humans or AI attacked them on maps where they had their default defenders changed

Optimizations

• Adventure AI optimizations with focus on larger maps

Known Issues

• Threat level indicator sometimes gives wrong threat assessment - be wary!
• Sim-turns is at version 0.1
• Co-Op (Teams) is at version 0.1
• All traits and abilities for troops are not yet implemented

 

[Latelistener]

What's the general consensus? Is this at least good for "what it is"? I kind of doubt it will stand to HoMM.

 

[Dayyālu]

What's the general consensus? Is this at least good for "what it is"? I kind of doubt it will stand to HoMM.

It's good if you get it for free. Updates are glacial, content is scattered, and it can't compete with HoMM on any day of the week.

 

[Dadd]

Why would you play this instead of HoMM2 or 3?

 

[spectre]

Because it's not inconceivable that one has already played the fuck out of HoMM2 or 3?
Some of us have been around when they were released, and even with the expansions for number three, one would like something fresh.

That said, this one isn't it (yet).

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

It's an amazing game that going to be delivered to your doorstep fresh and hot in 5-6 years maximum, promise.

In the meantime, you can enjoy the thrilling twitter bonanza. Just ask cybergoy69, or whatever that guy's name was.

 

[Feyd Rautha]

It's perfectly playable and a lot of fun! I've been spending some precious hours on it.

The roadmap for 2023 is very promising, so it will only get better.

 

[luj1]

HoMM 3 is gonna be the king forever, unfortunately

 

[Feyd Rautha]

Will I keep my research if I raise the Academy?

 

[lukaszek]

Will I keep my research if I raise the Academy?

you never lose your research, it might just go inactive if you dont have a single building

 

[hello friend]

Yeah there was a new patch a few days ago that added a surprising amount of new stuff and fixed all the bugs I'd noticed earlier.

Patch Notes

Hero's Hour v2.3.0 the Magical Update is now out! It's a large update which focuses on spells and spellcasters, but also has a lot of other goodies, a bunch of QOL-changes and almost innumerable balance changes. The patch notes are 190 lines long, but here are the highlights:

• 50 new spells
• Reworks to several magical skills - Potency, Wisdom, Demonology+Necromancy, Blight Ritual
• Magical overworld objects, such as mana wells, jars of pandora and scrolls
• Catapults, which destroy the defences of enemy towns over several turns
• Weather effects and other improved graphics

Good luck within a now even more magical version of Hero's Hour!

FULL PATCH NOTES

MAJOR FEATURES

- Potency has been reworked entirely
- Demonology and Necromancy now allow choosing the produced unit
- Spellbook now has sorting and filtering
- Mana Wells have had their effect changed slightly, but now appear sometimes during normal map generation
- Some cool new hero portraits
- Sorcery rework
- Mysticism rework
- Wisdom rework
- 40 new spells added
- Devour now uses unit power instead of cost, but shows the stat gain as you're targeting the spell so there's less need for guessing
- Fixed a graphical bug with Aether Forge spell offers which sometimes would show the wrong frame
- Spell targeting graphics updated
- Tired mechanic rework. Adventure map buildings that took "2 days" have been altered for the new system. Tired is now a debt of movement points. For instance, tired 5 means that next turn your hero will have 5 less movement points. Tired 25 means your hero will pay off 17 movement points next turn (remaining unmoveable) and then the last 8 the day after again.
- New Catapult mechanic
- New mechanic handling walls that are damaged before entering battle
- New UI that shows movement order controls
- Low Graphics setting that removes blood particles, numbers, corpses and spell effects during combat, as well as overworld mini-armies, minecarts and particles
- High graphics setting adds in denser obstacles
- High graphics setting adds in weather effects

MINOR CHANGES

- Skill descriptions now display fully without needing to press shift. The detailed description is slightly faded in colour
- Using the Aether Forge to gain mana can now set the hero's mana above max
- Nomads can now trade artifacts with normal heroes (still cannot trade units)
- Poison and Fire damage effects in combat now no longer deal any damage after combat is finished
- Malediction and Bane texts have been updated to better reflect their effects
- Auto-resolve prompt now also appears for tiny AI-controlled armies
- Made it so that you no longer accidentally press the start battle button when positioning units behind it
- Early encounters now no longer have Fireflies or units with Cinderspirit
- Shadowy units no longer leave corpses
- EXPERIMENTAL: Midas Touch hero skill also applies to some of their spec units
- Fire Shield and Air Shield spells reworked
- Meteor Shower renamed to Tectonic Shift. Icon and graphics changed
- Golden corpses have been greatly optimised
- Modded heroes which use faction classes now will show up naturally during gameplay, such as in tavern
- New unit ability icons for Retaliation, Quick Strike, Taunt, Savage, Leech Life
- The game will now correctly remember faction and hero choice when returning to main menu. Only works if the game was started recently - not loaded
- The Saviour unit ability from Flesh Wonders now has halved effect when targeting enemy units
- The Saviour unit ability now also works on Pillar (sans Monk), Arcane (sans Goblin Gunner) and Wild (sans Satyr) faction humanoids
- Saviour unit ability has been reworded to make this clear
- Loss and win screens for Hotseat mode should now work more correctly
- Shadowcloning now shows where your units will appear
- Army displays now look different to better fit larger unit sprites and to better show the number of units
- Overworld armies hover-over displays are now drawn differently to reduce the distance between army and display when zoomed far out
- Town tooltips have been overhauled
- New log that shows what spells are cast by heroes, units, abilities and skills during combat
- Spells no longer prioritise tier 1 units when the closest unit is the hero (very important for Shadowcloning)
- The skills one can choose when leveling up are now highlit in yellow
- Movement order controls have been improved
- Optimisation of background processes
- Neutral encounters now show a number of stars next to their difficulty rating. This shows their army sizes
- Graphics for dragons and great hydra updated
- Damage stat for units is now shown as a range instead of a single number

COMBAT AI CHANGES

- AI for a specific unit no longer switches targets randomly, instead having random weights of targeting for any unit pairing
- Ranged units now spend some time moving away from enemies while their attack is on cooldown
- Ranged units no longer slowly inch forward throughout combat while an enemy is within range
- When no enemy units are close, unit AI now searches for a far-away unit more consistently instead of switching between distant targets
- Unit AI now often keeps targeting the same enemy for several AI steps in a row, thus becoming more reliable and faster. It switches targets about once per second, so still should target correctly
- Combat AI should now run slightly faster

BALANCE CHANGES

- Week of Poverty now reduces gold income from towns to 50% (instead of 0%)
- Gold cost of using Diplomacy has been reduced significantly
- Damage from Burning is increased. Chance of applying Burning has been decreased
- Damage from Poison is increased. Chance of applying Poison has been decreased
- Siren Song now has a 3 day cooldown instead of 4 day cooldown
- Conflux now scales slightly more with higher mana spells
- Versatile now removes the deadzone where ranged units can neither attack with ranged or melee attacks
- Toxicology now spreads a bit less poison at longer distances
- Great Hydras now spawn every 10 days instead of every 15 days. Sacrificing artifacts decreases the timer by less
- Disbanding Avatars will not make the cost of recruiting a new Avatar go down
- Bodyguards units now regen faster
- Pearls can now be used for 1 growth units
- Heroes in combat now have +10 hp per level and +1 damage per level
- Copies of units with bodyguards ability now only create one bodyguard
- Reduced gold gained from selling artifacts
- Summoning spells now use a different formula, summoning significantly more units with high spellpower
- Duplicate spell nerfed
- Low rank demonology now offers less expensive units
- Rage unit ability is now 50% stronger
- Elementals spawned by the Conflux skill now lose health less quickly (about 30% more slowly)
- Explosion unit ability now has a smaller AOE when caused by a nonpermanent or neutral unit dying
- Explosion unit ability now deals less damage not only for nonpermanent units, but also for neutral units
- Rune of Air no longer reduces luck strike chance of units with high luck - instead, the cyclones summoned last for shorter time
- Rune of Burning and Rune of Death now no longer override the burning or deathstriking abilities of the units
- Rune of Death now creates slightly more skeletons, but reduces luck and morale by 1
- Rune of Ice now has a larger chance to proc and deals more damage
- Diplomacy will now always at least give a single unit (even in case of dragons)
- Heroes that are camping remain tired
- Counting house now gives +500 gold per day, but costs more
- Cost to develop potential mines has been reduced
- Flying units now have a cooldown between each time they use their execution
- Copies of units with bodyguards ability now only create one bodyguard

FIXES

- Skills that give a flat bonus to health or damage now always apply before skills which multiply health or damage
- The icon that shows that a unit is fleeing now draws in front instead of behind the unit - it would become obscured by big unit sprites
- Fixed Forlorn Cloister
- First Aid tent no longer prioritises neutral units above permanent units
- Permanent units rezzed by first aid or other effects now have abilities requiring permanence apply to them
- Fixed a bug that made Armorer change units projectile sprite instead of giving projectile protection
- Salted units don't recreate bodyguards
- Fixed a bug that blocked selection of alternate heroes
- Lexicon now shows heroes in the same order as the hero selection menu
- Fixed heroes taking much longer to return to battle if they were slowed before "dying"
- The Tired text in the GUI now disappears when hovering over movement bar, so that you can still see daily movement points
- Fixed a low chance for a whole unit group to spawn as Pond Champions instead of Toadfrogs
- The rare chance for a toadfrog to spawn as a pond champion now works correctly with casualties
- Fixed being offered zero units via Diplomacy in rare circumstancces - instead, the diplomacy pop-up just won't trigger now
- Fixed a bug that made Call Beasts summon Militia instead of Snouthogs on Dirt and Bamboo Forest terrains
- Daily gold income from units with Taxpayer now shown in the gold income tooltip
- Monolith description changed to better reflect its effect
- The income UI no longer shows rare resource income from Tainted mines, but now shows them under Gold income
- The income UI now correctly shows Overgrown mines
- Power of Elementals and Desperado achievements now can unlock even if the enemy is neutral
- Fixed a crash that occured in classic town screen when hovering over the gold cost of a high tier unit
- Fixed a rare crash relating to a save_info.txt file being mysteriously empty
- Warmachines now move to the position of the boat in naval combat while setting up armies
- Wargroups deployed mid battle are now less chaotic in where they can be deployed. They are now deployed at the edges of the map
- Xp gained messages now show the correct number in the case of learning
- Lower resolution displays now have the number of towns and heroes displayed in the HUD reduced
- Rightclicking a group of units on the battlefield will now split the group correctly even when playing at 2x speed
- Hidden beasts can now no longer be discovered on top of your hero
- Avatars can no longer get infinite movement by equipping and unequipping artifacts that increase movement
- Fixed a bug that could make the game get stuck while using Firegating and Firetrapping and making a movement order into the space in the spellbook where the spell is, then cancelling the spell
- Reduced the chance that parts of the map are inaccessible due to a building spawning close to your town and blocking off the path
- Fixed a bug that made units look wrong when leaving the state of being a frog
- Summoned units dying at end of combat no longer cast spells via Destruction
- Mastery buffs will no longer apply to the hero as a unit in combat
- Conscription center now as expected when discharging units worth more than 1 level of Discharge income increase
- Combat camera will no longer be able to leave the battlefield no matter which camera setting you use
- Fixed a bug that made the combat camera jitter crazily right after starting combat
- Wail will no longer affect undead or mechanical units
- Using town portal now sends the hero to the correct tile, and also makes them the visiting hero
- Forlorn Cloister now more correctly converts the spells that heroes know
- fixed reviving evolved units becoming new units in your army
- Gold cost of using Diplomacy has been reduced significantly
- More than 100 neutral modded units can now be loaded in

Listen, the game is completely devoid of the charm and soul of homm 1, 2, and 3. The battles are simplistic, but it's easy to forget that the battles of homm are also incredibly simplistic, and the only way to really raise the difficulty is by forcing you to cheese in a way the AI never would or could. When it comes to the cool and interesting strategies outside of battles this game already has the homms beat, in my opinion. The biggest problem is the aforementioned lack of charm, the excessive symmetry of the maps, and the inability to adjust water levels for maps - there's always a ton of water on every map. One of the main traits of one of the factions is aquatic creatures and the ability to build ships for armies by coastlines free if you have the building, so you can't really remove it either without gimping that faction. It's well worth adjusting the 'advanced settings' some, I find border guards slow the game down too much, and normal monster strength is a little overtuned in terms of pacing. Hero movement can be turned down to low, though, they go far by default and there is no penalty for switching between land and sea. In maps with many enemies, be prepared for your towns to be zerged by seafaring doomstacks constantly. If you ever want to be able to leave home and given a turn to react to an approaching hero you need hero movement to be turned down to low. I mean it depends on the map. Also turn on random hero skills so you don't know what your skill tree is gonna be pre-game, you still select them on levelup but you can't plan out 'I'm gonna go max devour this game'. Bodyguards btw is a hugely useful skill and heroes built with the second tier of the tavern start out with it.

 

[Anomander]

I think you are talking about different game (patch notes for sure are wrong). This topic is about Songs of Conquest.

 

[lukaszek]

Yeah there was a new patch a few days ago that added a surprising amount of new stuff and fixed all the bugs I'd noticed earlier.

all cool, but wrong game

 

[spectre]

Yeah, I think he's talking about this:

 

[SunKing]

Will I keep my research if I raise the Academy?

Be careful this forum is full of trolls who don't actually play videogames.

 

[hello friend]

loll yep wrong thread

I bet this songs of conquest game is shit

 

[smaug]

Because it's not inconceivable that one has already played the fuck out of HoMM2 or 3?
Some of us have been around when they were released, and even with the expansions for number three, one would like something fresh.

That said, this one isn't it (yet).

Have you beat every map on impossible? If not, you haven’t played the “fuck” out of HOMM.

 

[Feyd Rautha]

Will I keep my research if I raise the Academy?

Be careful this forum is full of trolls who don't actually play videogames.

I know but I'm willing to take chances.

Will I keep my research if I raise the Academy?

you never lose your research, it might just go inactive if you dont have a single building

Thanks. By don't have a single building you mean if I ever end up having just Wielders and no settlements?

 

[lukaszek]

Thanks. By don't have a single building you mean if I ever end up having just Wielders and no settlements?

once you get to more interesting scenarios, you will see that border towns are in a flux.

Each settlement got different buildings and building slots. You can actually own 2 settlements allowing you to own 2 large buildings. Or 1 settlement with 2 large slots!
Everything settlement-wise is local, save for research you mentioned. In theory you need just 1 building globally, but in case someone invades that specific settlement -> all your research becomes inactive.
You don't lose it, dont need to start over. But you will have to obtain respective building again. Might be as easy as retaking your settlement, or harder when it involves building it from scratch or converting enemy one.

 

[Feyd Rautha]

Ok. I was thinking if I can demolish the Academy once I have done all the research, and build another large building, but it sounds like I need to keep it in order for the research to remain active.