Suggestions for making the map editor better!

[Negern]

I.m.o only 1 & 2 are really needed, but some of the small ones are worth to think over too!

1. Making it possible to bann heroes and units completely, perhaps even some artifacts. Heroes and artifacts - I understand if many disagree, but the units - instead of forcing the player to edit every single castle on the map to ban medusas, the designer can do it by opening a menu, and once and for all get done with it - perhaps there could be a choice between "total bann" and "no productions, but available in ruins and from hero offers".
Heroes, I don't see the reason why not to get the choice to bann them. It's the map maker that makes the map, and he/she doesn't force others to play it. No really, some maps would only gain in not allowing ex. barbs and assas - not all ofc, but some. A lvl 3 assa can fly and has 108% chance to kill the enemy... For some maps, it's not worth putting points in personal ambush, but in a few small ones, they and babas wreck the overall balance - almost like you have to choose assa or baba or loose. I doubt hero types will be banned for no reason and belive that adding a function like this only would improve the game.
Artifacts - as above but, you know, no arguments for it. Why not? If the map makers does the map, he/she should be free to decide which items should be available. I don't think it would be an important change, like the two others, but a small change to the better. Some mapmakers could probably make good use of it.

2. Adding short buttons for different terrains. R for ridge, M for magma, R for river, W for water - etc! Would speed things up greatly!

Some small things:

Add a "redo"-button? (I would use it often, don't know about others! )

making it possible to use the old bridges. The new bridges (not the small ones) are quite bombastic, i.m.o, the old ones blended in better, but the new ones works better in some places.

If you out an item on the map and then click "undo", the item is gone and can't be found in the item list. It's gone. You have to load the game again to be able to get it again. Only way to remove safely is removing with that "edit settings"-button.

1 square water terrain, why does the smallest have to be 4? 1 would be great!

You place a group of enemies on a couple of artifacts and then place a mine or watchtower/etc on them. Then you think, "ah, i forgot to set income to 50" and try to edit settings on the stack. But first, you can only edit artifacts. You have to take them away to be able to reach the units. Then you have to take them away to reach mine, set to 50, and put out units and artifacts again. A "edit which group?"-window would help a lot!

mini map is very big on 125 and 150, it blocks part of the screen.

[Negern]

One last:

#3:

In ruins, shouldn't the range of possible (set in advance) allies become bigger? It's possible to get up to 5000 gold or any artifact from a lvl1 ruin, but only a small part of the units. A list, like that in the cities - "Selected (click list to add, click in the box to remove)" - would perhaps be of good use? Then the allies can even be of multiple kinds. 1 unicorn + 2 elves, 1 pegasi + 3 crows etc!

I don't believe that this function would get abused and that "1 grand archon, 1 red dragon, 1 devil, 1 green dragon"-level 1 ruins would pop up all over. It would be a nice tool, making it easier to give different sides pros and cons or to tailor sew rewards for the surrounding area - ex. a sandwurm in the desert!

[KGB]

1) My personal feeling are that heroes should not be able to be banned totally except on scenario maps. There is already enough memorization in terms of production and everything else that I don't want to now remember whether or not I want to play a map based on if some types of heroes aren't allowed. All it will do is lead to some other hero now being the 'defacto' choice for that map which is right back to where it is now with the Barb/Valk.

I feel the same about artifacts. Scenario maps only. Technically you can already ban an artifact now. Just place it in an impossible location to access (1 lava square surrounded by mountains and guarded by 8 Ghosts).

2) 1 square water terrain is not allowed because that is a river. In other words if you put down a strip of 1 square wide water then adding a port to it would break the logic of the game because it can't tell whether the port is on one side or the other. That's why rivers got added in 0.9 along with the special ability to board boats on both sides of the river. So technically if you want a 1 square water terrain just place 1 river square.

3) Mini-map blocking. There is a hide mini map button in the editor. I asked for that a long time ago.

Definitely the ability to select what to edit when you place items+units on towers/sites would be very useful.

KGB

[Negern]

1) My personal feeling are that heroes should not be able to be banned totally except on scenario maps. There is already enough memorization in terms of production and everything else that I don't want to now remember whether or not I want to play a map based on if some types of heroes aren't allowed. All it will do is lead to some other hero now being the 'defacto' choice for that map which is right back to where it is now with the Barb/Valk.

But if it would say that heroes and units are restricted. Like in the "features"-list in the "play"-menu, where FOW, ladder etc can be seen. Or if clicking "join game" - a warning sign appears "This map has no "portraits of heroes and small pictures of the units". Then anyone that felt "Nah, I don't want to play a game without barbs and sandwurms" would be able to leave - no problem.
Perhaps the "bann" function could be like banning the unit in all cities at once, then if some cities should have the unit, they could be added there manually. Manually changing five cities productions instead of 120 cities, it's way easier.

I agree about artifacts. It's would probably not come to use very often. Just thought it could be proposed among the other ideas, to see what other people thought. But heroes and units - they would be very good changes, i.m.o..

What do you think of #3?

[Negern]

Adding one more:

Possible to put gold on the map. It could be defended by enemies, placed on far of places - a little like questing. Ofc, also next to the starting position to speed things up a bit. I do this a lot with artifacts and I see other people do it too. Feels like this gold-thing would come in use too. It could just be added to the screen with signs and artifacts.

Spamming the wishes section

[KGB]

Negern,

We have scenario maps precisely for map makers to design maps with limited armies/triggers etc. That's where limited items/heroes belongs. Normal maps should have very few restrictions. Otherwise what's the point of scenario maps besides triggers. So if a map requires a lot of restrictions to be playable it's not really well balanced and therefore belongs in the scenario list where it can be customized.

I'm OK with larger selections of allies. But right now I thought you could pretty much put whatever in a ruin. You can't mix & match (unicorn + elves) but you can certainly put scouts in a ruin if you want. Can you not already place specific amounts of gold?

As for your newest request, gold on the map. Why? Just place a ruin there with gold and guarded by 1 Skeleton and no regeneration of the ruin. So much of what you are asking for can either be done another way (as I am pointing out) or can be done in scenario maps (triggers). I honestly don't think we need to spend more effort on basically duplicating existing functionality. It will only make making maps that much more complex.

KGB

[Negern]

Negern,

We have scenario maps precisely for map makers to design maps with limited armies/triggers etc. That's where limited items/heroes belongs. Normal maps should have very few restrictions. Otherwise what's the point of scenario maps besides triggers. So if a map requires a lot of restrictions to be playable it's not really well balanced and therefore belongs in the scenario list where it can be customized.

I'm OK with larger selections of allies. But right now I thought you could pretty much put whatever in a ruin. You can't mix & match (unicorn + elves) but you can certainly put scouts in a ruin if you want. Can you not already place specific amounts of gold?

As for your newest request, gold on the map. Why? Just place a ruin there with gold and guarded by 1 Skeleton and no regeneration of the ruin. So much of what you are asking for can either be done another way (as I am pointing out) or can be done in scenario maps (triggers). I honestly don't think we need to spend more effort on basically duplicating existing functionality. It will only make making maps that much more complex.

KGB

Good idea, that one with the lvl1 ruins instead of gold.

About the ruins, any artifact is available and up to 5000 gold can be set. Available allies: crows, pegasi, gryphon, medusa, ghost, wizard, elemental, demon, devil, archon, red dragon, kraken, sea serpent, eagle, great archon, green dragon. 1-4 of any of these units is possible to set.
Adding more units would only do good. Maybe that this idea of mine, that one could choose 1-4 of any units (mixing too), by clicking on them (like in that "restricted production"-screen) sounds weird, but it would give the map editor more choices and probably make some maps better.

Lastly, about maps with limited productions, heroes etc, it's not about them being unbalanced - it's about trying something that is not possible without some limitations. Imagine a car game. Some guy is sitting there, making a map for this car game. It has very harsh terrain, and to be able to win, one must be good enough to take these hard curves, keep the speed at a "just right"-level, to avoid going of track. When it's done, this guy posts this map and hosts a game. He chooses a regular car, but soon notices that most of the other player chooses another one - a sucky car, that no one uses in other games, cause it's so slow on the roads, only fast in the terrain (however this works). So - the map, it's not about "taking hard curves" etc anymore. Soon most people that plays it does it with that car, so it's more about avoiding the roads and taking short cuts over the terrain. Those who choose a different car looses.
So I'd say, it's not about "flawed map design" or something like that, it's just that maps can be played in ways not intended, and it ruins the experience. But maybe it is a bad idea to restrict. It's only a suggestion from my side. Scenario - why not? I don't mind.

[SnotlinG]

FYI I have now (in version 0.91) added the same kind of mini-menu-popup as in the game for when clicking on a tile that has multiple things that you can edit. So no need to delete your items to be able to edit the ruin for example

[Negern]

FYI I have now (in version 0.91) added the same kind of mini-menu-popup as in the game for when clicking on a tile that has multiple things that you can edit. So no need to delete your items to be able to edit the ruin for example

Great!

Now, I have a few more ideas here. Atm, every income building has 0-50 income, and it always starts out on randomized. So I wonder, is it 1/51 that it gets 50, and 1/51 to get 0?
I think income buildings should be like the cities. Have different options, but always start out on "normal", so map maker doesn't have to manually change every city. It could be the same for income buildings. The income could be 10+ 2 extra for every 5 str the guard has (+ terrain bonus) + 2 for every 2 steps on the terrain (without scout). So the gold mine would have 10+10+3=23 gold, while the less defended and more easily accessed open terrain-village would only give 10+4+2=16. 7 in difference between the easiest and "hardest". Ofc, they could be changed, but it would make things easier if income buildings didn't need editing. And I hope this would be fairly balanced.

Also, I still think map makers should manually be able to place gold on maps. Thought about KGB's suggestion for a while, but I don't agree. Just putting a ruin there - many would not notice, not so many clicks "look" before entering, and if it's a weak UL-hero, it'd some times not even be taken. Also, ruins give +wall and +city terrain.
Better just to put a sack of gold in plain sight, defended by any sort of unit in any kind of terrain. Like the artifacts.

Also, I wonder, are more names for cities needed? Often on maps with many cities, the names seem to run out, so that "unknowncity" appears everywhere. How many random names is there at the moment? Is it the same with ruins too?

[KGB]

Negern,

I think income buildings should be like the cities. Have different options, but always start out on "normal", so map maker doesn't have to manually change every city. It could be the same for income buildings. The income could be 10+ 2 extra for every 5 str the guard has (+ terrain bonus) + 2 for every 2 steps on the terrain (without scout). So the gold mine would have 10+10+3=23 gold, while the less defended and more easily accessed open terrain-village would only give 10+4+2=16. 7 in difference between the easiest and "hardest". Ofc, they could be changed, but it would make things easier if income buildings didn't need editing. And I hope this would be fairly balanced.

I like how they are now where I can manually specify an exact gold total regardless of defender. I typically place better gold sites further from cities so there is an incentive to go there.

If this new way of 'poor, normal, rich' was added but not tied to defender then I'd be OK with that. You can always place extra guards on your 'rich' sites.

Also, I still think map makers should manually be able to place gold on maps. Thought about KGB's suggestion for a while, but I don't agree. Just putting a ruin there - many would not notice, not so many clicks "look" before entering, and if it's a weak UL-hero, it'd some times not even be taken. Also, ruins give +wall and +city terrain.Better just to put a sack of gold in plain sight, defended by any sort of unit in any kind of terrain. Like the artifacts.

I still disagree. A gold sack in plain site is FAR less likely to be seen than a ruin. Everyone knows what ruins are. Adding more stuff to the map only complicates the map more than it already is. Besides an actual bag of gold just lying there would have LONG ago been picked up by the local peasants.

If you don't want a ruin I suggest a scenario map. There you can place gold on the ground via the trigger mechanism. Either give it away for free (just stand on the trigger which is equivalent of picking up a bag lying around) or have the player do something else to earn it (conquer a city/rebuild/defeat a guardian etc). That's exactly what triggers are for.

KGB