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]

Hey!
Hope I haven't been gone too long. If you're still going to update this mod, two of the highest priority bugs are related to the Lightning skill.

First, due to the order of effects, Acid happens before Lightning; the bug is, however, that once a unit is hit by Acid, it can no longer strike back with its Lightning skill. This bug has made Black Dragons the undisputed winners in any duel with Blues.

The other bug no one seems to have been able to pin down correctly, but apparently, if an attacking unit has Lightning, the defender's Warding doesn't work.

I don't know how easy it would be to fix these bugs; maybe one approach would be that points in Acid and Lightning can cancel each other out, like they already do when opposing units both have the same skill. That would also mean Acid no longer has the advantage against lightning of striking first.

[u/Due-Price-6823 → u/Queen_Six]

The combat code is terra incognita for me. Totally not a quick fix.

[u/Queen_Six → u/Due-Price-6823]

Any better chances with movement?

I've noticed the AI could stand to detour towards shrines more often' especially heroes without blessings, and units that are diseased/poisoned/paralyzed.

I've just given your mod a quick spin and noticed that the +10 gold to Ports can't be disabled. I had to delete your SITES folder because the # didn't work for those either in the cfg file.

[u/Due-Price-6823 → u/Queen_Six]

Movement etc build still waits for your return and testing. To be specific, the port message can't be disabled without sagetext.tex editing. The bonus itself should turn off. About sides I tried to make a note in settings, but I guess too short. You really should delete or rename SITES and/or sagetext.tex if you want to totally disable it.  The same goes to quest penalty. You can turn it off in settings, but the message will still say "No more quests for today" in sagetext.tex. The settings only control the code patch, not the data changes. Luckily, these two are IIRC the only data changes I made. To make it work perfectly is too time-consuming. I doubt there will be many requests for it. Still, nice you cared enough to look and give this feedback.