I updated my Mod. It is still not finished, but already playable.
What it does:
First i stumbled over Henning Köhlers boost_core mod, which i found a very good idea. Especially his redefinition of the Eagle Eye skill was inspiring. Unfortunately he forgot to reconfigure all the heroes with Eagle Eye specialty of heroes that start with Eagle Eye skill. So i did a new mod doing exactly this. The Eagle Eye skill is now a support skill for archery and scouting. So it moved from a magic skill to a might skill, just as in the boost_core mod. And then all Heroes with Eagle Eye specialty got Learning specialty instead. That fit best to their Biography.
Next i saw was a level based growth for all those secondary skill specialists. Great idea. I found that this is now incorporated into base vcmi. Good. So i just added some gimmick to those heroes. This part is still under heavy development. Currently most interesting part is: Tied the Death Ripple and Animate Dead spells to the Necromancy skill. So all Necros start with these, but they should not show up in towns other than Necropolis.
Then i added a bunch of new skills. First: Resource generating skills. There are some heroes with resource generating specialty. I modified them so that one of their starting skills is now the matching resource generating skill. Plus a few more skills like Medicus or Whip.
Next i modified the Ironfists. For them i created the “Nobility” skill. That works similar to the Statue of the Legion, but limited to visited town. Their specialty is now “King” resp. “Queen”. That specialty boosts 4 secondary skills: Nobility, Leadership, Diplomacy and Estates. That should be a perfect setup for King and Queen. They are still special, so yes, they are a bit overpowered, but limited to maps where they are inserted intentionally.
Next: Made most of the spell specialists more interesting. Just grow their power with level was too boring. So all spell specialists with battle spells that have a mass version now open battle with their specialty spell. F.ex, Septienna with her Death Ripple specialty is now the perfect cleaner for all those spammed out single creature heroes that the AI spams out before loosing. She just needs to go into battle and automatically wins. Your main hero can press forward to the last enemies town.
For other spell specialists it is a little more complicated. I decided to make use of unused magic calling creature animations and add the ability to cast a spell to these creatures. So the same creature may cast different spells depending on in what heroes army they are. Or they do not cast a spell at all. If there is a specialty hero for this creature, i added a matching spell tho this creature. For example Inghams Zealots can now cast bless. In other armies they do not cast anything.
Then i added a few new heroes. They are still experimental. F.ex. there is now a specialist against undead. His good aligned troops do more damage against undead. Against the undead he is a real asset. Against others he is less than other heroes, because his specialty is absolutely useless then.
Also there is a big map to play with. Unfortunately i have put a few decorations on it that came from WoG. They are unknown to the server, and the server crashes. I tried to remove these objects, but obviously i did not find all. It is possible to play it after inserting a line into the vcmi system generic.json:
"decorativeObject" : { "index" :40, "handler": "static", "types" : { "object" : { "index" : 0} } },
It doesn’t matter where exactly you add it. But with this line the map does no more crash. But the mod is not bound to this map. The Mod can be played with any map.
So, have fun 