Unofficial patch 1.0 for Heroes of Annihilated Empires (1.1)







Now available for the Steam version of HOAE. Make sure you grab the right installer for your edition of the game.



I discovered this game nearly a decade after its release and I was very surprised at just how good the game is. Another surprise was finding out just how unknown the game is. The original 2006 version release was infested with Starforce and the game was released with a real lack of multiplayer maps, but other than that there's a ton of content as an RTS. Unfortunately the developers dropped it very quickly which probably explains the whole situation.

Here's an update fixing what should have been fixed a long time ago. Most of this patch is really just very basic fixes that could have done on a sunday afternoon by the developers. For the unit balance side of things, I didn't change many units unless they were in a severe state as most of the unit balance isn't too bad, at least against the AI. For spell balance, I got a little more creative and tried to make the majority of spells worth using while remaining balanced. There were some seriously worthless spells, some broken ones, spells that didn't level up at all, and some that had no equal. I also tried to reduce cooldowns to reasonable levels where possible. For item balance I mostly focused on eliminating the negative bias on items, there were simply too many items which were more damaging to your character than helpful, now hopefully you can choose from a variety of items without being penalized heavily.



Some of the changes do not affect the campaign, specifically the unit changes. The campaign has its own balancing and I did not think it wise to upset it, other than making the first mission slightly easier. Items, spells and hero skills are all enabled on the campaign however.



All players in multiplayer require the same version.



Installation



1. Locate your Heroes install and ensure it is version 1.1 (I recommend the pre-patched GOG version, but the steam version should work also)

2. Install the patch to your Heroes directory.

3. Run the game, if installed successfully, you should have "Unofficial" in the bottom right of the main menu.



To uninstall the patch, just delete patch02.gs1 from the Data directory in your Heroes folder.



New map



Barren isle is a 7 player RTS/RPG skirmish/multiplayer map. It has been well tested with AI and performs reasonably well.



Build time was around six days. I spent a significant amount of time ensuring it was built professionally and that it was fairly balanced (it is not a symmetrical map). I do not recommend running the game on high speed as some of the geometry is complex and may cause frame rates to drop when gaining territory.

Replaced spells



Summon genie was replaced with Summon devil, as the genie spell was a copy of the ice elemental and it was a boring choice.

Now the summon is a seriously powerful asset to a caster (although not as powerful as a real devil). Life drain from the spell will eventually kill your hero if the devil is not dispelled. The devil grows in power with caster level. Handle with care.



Campaign changes



Mission #1: Hero now starts with an explosive elixir. You can now lose 30 citizens rather than 20 in the first objective.

The tower is slightly more useful at the start also.





Balance changes



The player's hero is released earlier in RTS mode. I decided to stray away from the RPG mode in multiplayer in favor of getting access to heroes for more interesting RTS play. RPG mode should still function as usual, but expect your RTS opponents to catch up if you linger.



Hero run ability speeds increased from 50% to 100%, but length reduced by half.





Undead



The mummy has a bit of an identity crisis. Being one of the few fast undead units, I decided to push it more into a skirmishing/anti-magical troop role.

It should hopefully now be a viable early game choice.



Mummy damage 4 to 8.

Mummy magic resistance 2 to 5.

Mummy production time 65 to 60.



Deathknight attack range raised from 40 to 80 because it was unable to hit targets in melee.

Deathknight no longer has issues with formations.

Zombies are now able to move properly.





Mechanics



Ornithopter can now shoot at ground targets. These were too terrible at their actual anti-air role that I decided to open the ground up to them. They're now much more useful as sniper platforms.

Zeppelin rate of fire 80 to 45, damage 60 to 35, range 300 to 400.

Zeppelin piercing resist 5 to 0.

Zeppelin bomb radius 50 to 75.



Druids

-----

Centaur rotation speed reduced from 32 to 16.

Druid spell damage 3 to 7.





Spell changes



Many spell cooldowns were reduced by half, check the readme for more details.





Spell changelog



Plant wall now uses 80 mana to summon 6 plants, scaling up to 16 plants at level 50.

Call of nature now scales up more with levels.

'Summon' now summons exploding spiders instead of rats and their numbers increase every seven levels.

Frost now scales up in both duration and damage. 110 mana to 90 mana. Hero paralysis was bought in line with other spells.

Petrification 75 mana to 65 mana.

Acid wave no longer erroneously grants the enemy armor bonuses.

'Mine' now spawns an additional mine every 5 levels. Mana 50 to 60. Explosion movement force lowered.

Ice arrow damage scales better.

Ice sphere damage scales slightly better.

Firestorm radius scales with level, gains more damage per level, but has slightly reduced building damage.

Tree of life radius scales up, but very slowly. Tree of life's health increases with caster level.

Acid radius slightly increases each level. Acid damage eventually rises above fireball.

Lightning storm now stuns up to 20 units for a short duration.

Lightning eye radius increased from 350 to 400, rate of fire increased greatly with a small damage reduction.

Fear radius now scales up. Fear duration reduced for scaling.

Necrosis now deals 75 AOE damage and converts units as it was supposed to.

Earthfist now deals slightly less building damage.

Astral casting range 400->500.

Invisibility radius scales up slowly.

Magic weapon damage and radius scales with level.

Rune of fire damage scales slightly better.

Snare duration reduced to sensible levels, damage scales up slightly.

Blindness casting range 600 -> 900. Blindness is now AOE but requires a direct target.

Polymorph is on an 80 second timer and now actually polymorphs enemy targets. The duration on enemy heroes was increased slightly, but the transformed health of the hero is higher. Using polymorph offensively works better on targets with higher HP and if your level is lower than the target.

Deathtrick now works properly. Deathtrick is now instant cast. Added protection against magical damage. Cooldown 80->28. Duration 55s->14s. Deathtrick can now only affect allies, as it was too effective against high HP targets.





Hero skill changes



Restored more than 20 animations for skills and auras.

Druid insect aura now deals higher base damage and has damage scaling with level.

Archmage Arcane energy transformation is now more powerful and scales faster. Efficiency of the aura improves with level.

Artificer Smokescreen radius 150->300 and radius per level 5->8.

Ranger Wind arrows now scale up both damage and range bonus.

Enforcer Dynamite now stuns for 2 seconds.

Geomancer Earthpower scales up more powerfully.





Item changes



Check the readme accompanied with the mod install.





Misc



Improved some of the English used to describe skills.

Unlocked various difficulty modes.

Map editor added to the main menu.





Known issues



Towers may be unable to fire if you attempt to use their ability out of range. Fire the ability at something within range if this happens.

Undead AI #1 (zombie build) can start a bit late if difficulties are above very easy. I haven't been able to fix it, but the AI should still function as normal, it's just a bit slow to get started.

Zeppelin AI needs improvement. I tried to make the weapon 360 degree so it would be more responsive but I haven't figured out how to yet. In the meantime it should be much improved for players.



Hopefully you enjoy my patch for this great RTS.

Magitek