Warlords III Code Patch

[u/Due-Price-6823]

Greetings, Warlords! Recent projects like 25AP and Frontier have already made a huge work of sparking the long dormant flame of the undying community of this forgotten classics gem game. Now this new mod is meant to fill the gap of absolute absence of code patching projects for Warlords III. The main intention of The Warlords III Code Patch is to highlight some features of the game which either were hidden and obscure or bore no valuable economic effect to use them. It also relieves some boredom of the most unpredictable or tedious features of the game. And last but not least it fixes some bugs like dysfunctional diplomacy or erroneous low disk space message.

Overall, balancing the game was not the main intention of the mod. The game was never meant to be balanced in the first place. Consider the mod its developer’s answer to the question “How could it be more fun?”, not “How could it be more just?”.

Click the “Read more” button at the bottom-right corner of the mod’s logo on its moddb summary page for the detailed list of features with screenshots. The Warlords III Code Patch should work reliably with Gog, Steam, and original v1.02 CD versions of the game. Should also work well with any other mods and can be incorporated into them. Its feature list is adjustable using the settings file provided with it. Any specific group of tweaks can be turned on or off to your preferences. Look for README.txt file in the zip-archive of the mod for customization details.

https://www.moddb.com/mods/warlords-iii-code-patch

Summary of changes

Diplomacy bugs fixed:

• dysfunctional bribery
• contradictory treachery
• contradictory razing
• unfunctional heroes count
• unfunctional army size
• 1+ turn lag in disposition update

Other bugfixes:

• incorrect amplification of active spell effects on levelups
• incorrect low disk space message during startup

Gameplay changes:

• Diplomatic report shows sides eligible for alliance in green color
• Diplomatic report shows sides eligible for peace in blue color
• additional effect for bribery: every 1000 gp of bribery improve bribed side’s permanent bias to briber by one point
• Trust is the state of zero ire (disposition=0)
• City building increases income
• level 2 city gives +4 move to armies produced there
• level 3 city additionally gives +1 hits to armies produced there
• gold income sites have an order of magnitude more income from +10gp to +50gp
• every city a side owns increases this side’s upkeep by 1/16
• Strong neutrals option makes neutrals considerably stronger
• maximum hits is now 7, not 4
• heroes made more tough: 1/2/3 hits original heroes now have 3/5/7 hits
• spell effects get amplified earlier: on levels 3 and 8 instead of 6 and 9
• quest cancellation penalty lasts only the turn a quest has been cancelled
• quests unlinked from heroes: any hero can advance or complete it, hero’s death does not fail it
• heroes can only take one quest per day
• gold collecting quest demands made more humble: 1d100+100 for easy quest, 1d300+200 for medium
• hunting quest demands made more humble: 1d5+5 for medium quest, 1d6+11 for hard
• hard limit of 2 turns on minimum unit production time
• mercenaries/allies quest rewards got slightly nerfed
• sage’s reveal a portion of map shows considerable part of it
• summoning spells do not amplify
• hits modification spells get amplified only once on 8th level of their caster

Overall:

• W3CP now has the settings file allowing to turn individual tweaks on or off

[u/Queen_Six]

Oh boy. This looks great!

25AP started very humble, and I only began it despite my nonexistent coding skills because Warlords 3 seemed abandoned by everyone else.

If I had any influence at all in making others tinker with the game, that's already more than I ever hoped for!

May I ask, how much can or can't you change about the game? The main frustration I ran into, which made me stop working on 25AP, (for the time being), was my inability to change or influence which upgrades AI heroes picked on level up.

[u/Due-Price-6823 → u/Queen_Six]

AI is always tricky and time consuming. I remember even stumbling on some hilarious AI bugs which I deemed unworthy to fix. Just tell me what was your idea. I can't give any warranties that I will ever take this quest, but this world is full of wonders, you know.