
				BTB'S "ANOTHER HEROES 3 MOD" - README

				       TABLE OF CONTENTS
				       -----------------
				    1. INTRODUCTION & INSTALLATION
				    2. OVERVIEW OF FACTIONS
				    3. HEROES & SKILLS
				    4. MIGHT (UNIT CHANGES)
				    5. MAGIC (SPELL CHANGES)
				    6. ARTIFACTS & OTHER CHANGES
				    7. BUGS & KNOWN ISSUES
				    8. VERSION HISTORY & FUTURE
				    9. CREDITS & CONTACT INFO

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				    1. INTRODUCTION & INSTALLATION




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Heroes of Might & Magic III is a game that's regarded by nearly anyone who's familiar with it as one of
the best strategy games of all time, if not just one of the best games period. Many of you reading this
may not be familiar with Heroes of Might & Magic III at all, but have played my other mods and thus know
what to expect here. Simply put, Another Heroes 3 Mod doesn't try to turn the game into something that
it's not, just a better version of what it already is. It is my hope that it succeeds in that endeavor.

To address my other potential audience, this mod is best compared to the one with which you are already
very likely familiar: Horn of the Abyss. HotA is a mod that, while liberal with the addition of newer
content, is very conservative with making changes to the base game. AH3M represents the inverse of that
design philosophy; whereas HotA adds the Cove and Factory factions, AH3M focuses on making the existing
Conflux faction feel more like it actually belongs. Another example is that HotA does not cut any spells
or skills while AH3M is more than willing to dump lost causes such as Eagle Eye and Disguise rather than
attempt to salvage them. So far as quality of life/objective improvements are concerned, like being able
to reject an unwanted skill from a map location, AH3M and HotA both do the same things to my knowledge.

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		Please note that AH3M was built for - and requires - the fanmade HD Mod:

			http://mmgames.ru/files/hmm/3_HDmod/HoMM3_HD_5.3_R5.exe
			http://btb2.free.fr/mods/h3/HoMM3_HD_5.3_R5.exe (mirror)

The above are links to the last known stable version of HD mod that contains updates relevant to people
who aren't playing HotA or speaking Russian. The current version of HD mod can always be found at its
official site (https://sites.google.com/site/heroes3hd/), but compatibility with AH3M can no longer be
guaranteed due to the rapid and drastic changes that recent updates have been making.

Once HD mod is installed, use the launcher to make an HD executable file - this is what AH3M's installer
(Install.bat) will edit along with the following other files: h3maped.exe, HD_SoD.dll, H3bitmap.lod, and
H3sprite.lod. Backups of these files will be created with the .bak extension. To update the mod to a new
version or uninstall it, just run the installer again and choose the appropriate option when prompted.

Support for colorblind players has also been added to AH3M. You will be asked during the installation
process if you want to enable this feature. It will add a blue tint to several map objects that would
otherwise be difficult or impossible for people with colorblindness (red/green specifically) to see.

Another optional feature of this mod is a custom soundtrack ripped (mostly) from the game that inspired
it: Might & Magic VII. For space reasons, it is not part of the main download and can be found at:

		https://www.mediafire.com/file/oq68czzkfsz74yw/ah3m_ost.rar/file

Finally, if you're new to the game, I suggest Breakout Island (an easy 1v1 map) or Divided Lands (a very
traditional/generic 4-player map) as good starting points. I also recommend reading the next section, as
it's meant to function both as a general introduction to the nine factions for novice players as well as
highlighting major changes made to them for veteran players. Also, most interface elements in the game
can be right-clicked for additional information, which should be helpful for old and new players alike.

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				    2. OVERVIEW OF FACTIONS




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					    CASTLE
					    ------

				      MIGHT HERO: Knight
				      MAGIC HERO: Cleric

Castle is easily the game's most "vanilla" faction, both in terms of its theme and being one of the more
straightforward to play due to being more physically than magically oriented. This fact was highlighted
in the original game by an inability to build Castle's mage guild up to the final level, a restriction
which felt unnecessary from a gameplay perspective and has thus been removed here. Instead, this is now
reflected in the stats of Castle's heroes, its spell availability, and, primarily, in its strong units.

That Castle's 7th-level unit is the most powerful of all affiliated units is both an advantage and a
drawback. The pros are obvious, but that power comes at a price. Angels require a sizable investment of
both gold and resources, enough so that players generally don't survive long enough to see them without
first learning how to effectively utilize the rest of Castle's forces. Castle is otherwise a relatively
cost-efficient town due in part to the fact that Knights have a major class skill that increases income.

Though a predominately defensive town, Castle's physical prowess and extended skillset lead to it being
played more offensively. A central theme of Castle, particularly in this mod, is morale. Of little value
in the original game due to its low cap, its formula has been reworked here to make it more significant.
Positive morale allows units to potentially get two actions in one turn, and at high values the odds of
that happening are now substantial. This provides not only the obvious benefit of more attacks, but it
also makes it easier for Castle's units to quickly cross the battlefield and engage their opponents.

Castle's defensive nature is immediately apparent when looking at their first-level unit: Pikemen. They
now receive a greater defensive bonus when using the "Defend" command and their upgraded forms are now
able to preemptively retaliate while doing so. A core mechanic in Heroes games is that ranged units such
as Archers (Castle's second-level units) need protection since they're very weak at melee combat, and
Pikemen highlight this concept for newer players by being ideal candidates for the job.

Monks, Castle's other ranged unit, show us something else we'll be seeing quite a bit of: ranged units
who can also fight at melee. As we'll get further into later on, this ability showed up a bit more than
it probably should have in the original game, the end result being which ranged units could and couldn't
effectively fight off a blocking enemy unit wasn't very intuitive. As Monks are traditionally a fighting
class, it made more sense for them to be punchers first and shooters second. Thus, they're now a ranged
unit - that will still possess the power to fight effectively at melee - only when upgraded to Zealots.

Another major change in this mod is that First Aid is now a starting skill for Clerics, which means that
they now come with a first aid tent. This would appear useless at first glance, however, since Castle's
blacksmith sells ballistas in the original game and so there would be no way to replace them when they
inevitably get destroyed in combat. War machines and their associated skills is an entire discussion in
and of itself that will be handled later, suffice it to say for now that both are of far greater value
here. Furthermore, Castle's blacksmith now sells first aid tents instead of ballistas.

Speaking of Clerics, note that the role of magic even in a physically-leaning faction remains important.
As a rule of thumb, might heroes are more partial to support spells since their potency is static (magic
power determines only their duration) whereas magic heroes can cast directly offensive spells to greater
effect and are thus more interested in those. This is a sliding scale, however, that depends in part on
how much a faction leans toward magic overall. In Castle's case, both its heroes tend to prefer casting
spells to strengthen or defend their own army than to harm their opponents. Offensive magic is present,
but takes a backseat for the most part to support spells. Further, adventure map spells like Town Portal
and Fly (both very common in Castle towns) are extremely useful to any hero, might or magic.

Additionally to its spells, Castle's unique buildings also focus mostly on helping its heroes get around
the map. Most notable are Stables, which provide a weekly movement boost to visiting heroes - while they
can also exist as standalone locations on the adventure map, Castle benefits from not needing to rely on
them. Castle is also one of the towns able to build a Shipyard in coastal towns and is the only one able
to construct a Lighthouse to boost water movement. These were less notable features in the base game due
primarily to how uncommon it was for a town to meet the requirements to build them; AH3M addresses this
by having several maps designed specifically with this feature in mind.

All of this comes together to make Castle the game's de-facto "tutorial" faction. The good mix of units
and strong leaning toward might - particularly defense - make Castle a great team on which to learn the
ropes. While other games would present Castle as a "beginners-only" town that's outdone by the others
once you get a handle on things, it's a powerful choice here for newcomers and veteran players alike.

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					    RAMPART
					    -------

				      MIGHT HERO: Ranger
				      MAGIC HERO: Druid

Rampart is arguably the closest thing in HoMM3 to a completely evenly-balanced faction, hence it being a
fan favorite. Like Castle, Rampart's "might" half leans into defense while the "magic" half skews toward
knowledge. This will be a consistent theme: the "good" towns all focus on these attributes whereas evil
factions instead like attack and magic power. But while Castle is a defensive town with enough focus on
might and strong enough units to be played offensively, Rampart requires a more balanced approach.

Perhaps the most important place to start is with the original game's noticeable lack of a second ranged
attacker. This is a thematic curiosity given Rampart's position as a ranged powerhouse, especially since
Centaurs were ranged units in the first two games and even have unused ranged attack animations in the
game's data. AH3M uses those animations, but the fact that their shots are thrown spears as opposed to
fired arrows leads us to a wider-ranging topic: ammo carts. Now sold at Rampart blacksmiths, these were
of little use before since every ranged unit had more shots than they ever needed. This is no longer the
case, with some units such as upgraded Centaurs now only having one or two shots otherwise.

As for the rest of Rampart's units, it introduces one archetype that we didn't see truly represented in
Castle: the tank. Extremely resilient, but also extremely slow, Rampart's forces include two such units.
Players of the original game often leave them garrisoned to avoid slowing heroes down since map movement
is based on the speed of the slowest unit in a hero's army and Rampart units are otherwise quite swift.
Here, there's more incentive to bring defensive units into the field due to how Logistics (a major class
skill for Rangers) now works. Whereas before it was a flat bonus to movement, it now raises the minimum
amount of movement a hero can receive regardless of army composition. In other words, it helps close the
gap between armies with slow units and armies containing only faster ones by having less or no effect on
the latter. Also common for both of Rampart's heroes is the Pathfinding skill to counteract the movement
penalties for rough terrain, making it one of the better factions for getting around in general.

Also pushing Rampart in a defensive direction is its elemental affinity. Much of its spell list will be
familiar if you've already played as Castle since both factions prominently feature air and water magic.
Fire, the most offensive element, is only lightly represented in Castle and, uniquely to this mod, is
completely unavailable to Rampart: one of only two factions in AH3M to shut out any element wholesale.
However, as you might expect from the town of elves, dwarves, and angry trees, the element with by far
the biggest focus here is the most defensive: Earth. Of particular note is Resurrection, the top-level
Earth spell that's more commonly found in Rampart than any other town.

This brings us to the subject of dragons, whose blanket spell immunity in the base game also prevented
them from being affected by friendly magic - including Resurrection. Immunity to spells by level or in
their entirety has been removed here and replaced by a combination of damage reduction and resistance to
magical status effects (more on that later). However, in a bid to keep Rampart's dragons more distinct
from those of Dungeon - as well as to keep closer to Rampart's theme - Gold Dragons now instead have a
natural resistance to all status effects, both physical and magical, a resistance shared by Dwarves.

Cost-wise, Rampart is a moderately inexpensive town owing largely to its unique buildings that mitigate
its demands of both gold and resources. The latter is subject to a good deal of randomness, however, and
the former requires initial frugality to be effective since it provides interest to stored funds rather
than a flat bonus. The general strategy with basically any town is to prioritize getting dwellings built
to maximize growth, but Rampart will want to slow their roll at some point to bolster their finances.
This can eventually lead to a substantial nest egg in the late game with some patience, especially on
larger maps with multiple Rampart towns since the effects of multiple treasuries is cumulative.

Given the many similarities between them, Rampart is an excellent second town for novice players to move
on to after playing as Castle. It's a very middle-of-the-road faction that's well-representative of most
aspects of the game and serves well to help ease newbies into the further complexities of magic. That it
digs deeper into defensive play than Castle also provides a good learning experience for anyone who has
thus far gotten by with a mindless "beatstick" approach to combat: something that works to a degree with
Castle, but not a strategy that will get you very far in the long run.

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					    TOWER
					    -----

				      MIGHT HERO: Alchemist
				      MAGIC HERO: Wizard

The third and final of the good factions, Tower leans heavily into the "magic" half of the game's title.
The specific focus here is knowledge; Tower gets a wide variety of spells and its heroes get plenty of
mana with which to cast them. As with the other good towns, there's also a strong defensive slant here
that's particularly noticeable with Tower's bulkier units. The downside is that Tower's units are also
the slowest on average of any faction and skills to speed up map movement aren't nearly as common for
Tower heroes as they are with Rampart, leading to it having trouble getting around in the early game.

Tower compensates for its biggest shortcoming with its greatest strength: magic. Its mage guild has the
best representation of all four elements that we've seen thus far, but like Castle it leans most heavily
toward water and particularly air magic. These elements contain several spells that speed up both units
in combat as well as travel on the map. Air magic also provides some of the most potent offensive spells
in the game, which one could in theory get by with relying on almost exclusively, but playing Tower well
means learning how to use all of its spells effectively since that is where it excels the most.

More specifically, Wisdom is a major skill for Tower, which no longer serves its previous role of gating
high-level spells. Rather, it now allows heroes to cast spells more frequently in combat with the caveat
that each further spell must be of a different element. This is a severe limiting factor in most cases
since heroes are unlikely to be skilled in more than two elements and unskilled spellcasts are much less
effective. However, Tower's Magic Library now sells spell scrolls, which allow heroes to cast spells at
basic expertise even without the associated skill. This is an incredibly powerful pairing that can allow
Tower heroes to dominate combat through overwhelming spell power alone so long as their mana holds out.

Several changes have been made to Tower's units, perhaps the most notable of which is that Gremlins are
no longer ranged units when upgraded, instead gaining the ability to repair damaged war machines through
percussive maintenance (i.e. hitting them). Gargoyles are now properly classified as unliving units and
have the same resistance to magical damage as Golems; note that this resistance now includes elemental
ranged attacks from certain units, making Gargoyles and Golems extremely durable against them. Archmages
gain the ability to Dispel positive statuses with their shots and Genies have had their random spellcast
replaced with a static spell called Zoom, which is basically a reworking of the old Teleport spell.

Both here and the original game, Titans are amongst the most powerful of all 7th-level units. They're as
strong - and as resilient - as Angels, and most notably are the only top-tier unit with a ranged attack.
The ranged attack is particularly important because where Titans fall behind is in the speed department.
In the original game, superior and often excessive speed was a given for any 7th-level unit, even if it
made no sense. This is no longer true, and Titans are one of the hardest-hit casualties of this change.
Despite this nerf, however, Titans remain firmly within the upper echelon of 7th-level units and are a
massive boon to Tower when they can finally be afforded.

This brings us to a final point: Tower is the most expensive town in terms of initial building costs and
also on the pricey end for weekly unit buyout. Tower's situation is further complicated by a build-order
bottleneck that gates most of its higher-level dwellings behind a hefty resource paywall. In games where
resources are tight, this can mean a difficult decision between early-game unit growth and focusing on
Tower's greatest strength by building up its mage guild. If you've been glossing over the Estates skill
on your heroes up until this point, this is where it really starts to show its worth. More importantly,
if you've been neglecting to use the town marketplace to shore up resource deficiencies (note that this
mod offers far better prices than the original game did), this is where you'll really want the help.

Further, all of the magic-leaning towns have a major cash sink in the form of a marketplace upgrade that
sells artifacts, which given unlimited funds can go a long way toward compensating for the statistical
weaknesses of their heroes. In a more realistic setting, however, it's a minor tool at best in the early
game that mostly exists to fill in the gaps in your end-game equipment setups. Note that, just as with
marketplaces, the prices offered here are much fairer than they were in the original game.

In short, Tower is not a faction for beginners. The game generally expects players to start off with the
"might" factions and slowly make their way over to the "magic" ones, meaning that Tower tosses you into
the deep end expecting that you know how to swim. As is generally true of any magical class in any game,
Tower isn't as powerful as most other factions right out of the gate and only manages to find its true
strength in the late-game. Thus, the goal here is managing to survive until then.

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					    INFERNO
					    -------

				      MIGHT HERO: Sentinel
				      MAGIC HERO: Hellion

The first of the game's evil factions, Inferno is the opposing town to Castle: leaning hard into offense
where Castle is more defensive, but also leaning a bit more toward magic. The drawback to being one step
closer to the middle of the "might vs. magic" spectrum, however, is that its "might" half is less well-
rounded as a result. More to the point, while Castle's strong defensive prowess is complimented by solid
offensive capabilities, Inferno's durability leaves a bit more to be desired.

Contrary to Castle's heavy focus on morale, Inferno instead showcases its sister mechanic: luck. Whereas
morale provides the possibility of an extra turn, good luck can cause a unit's attack to deal double the
damage. On the surface, this is effectively the same thing as two attacks, hence luck being viewed as an
inferior version of morale since it doesn't also allow for additional movement. However, it does reduce
the damage from retaliatory strikes by virtue of allowing attacking units to slay more opponents with a
single blow - something of great importance to a faction that prioritizes offense over defense.

In other regards, Inferno actually has a lot more in common with Rampart, namely in its lack of a second
ranged attacker in the original game and being the only other faction in AH3M to be totally shut out of
one of the four schools of magic (Water). But while Rampart barely even notices the lack of fire magic,
Inferno's mage guild ends up feeling more restricted as a result. This isn't actually the case; Inferno
gets a solid variety of spells that even includes several defensive ones, but the school of water magic,
unlike fire, is home to some important mainstays that many spellbooks will feel lacking without.

Inferno's final major focus is speed, with the fastest units on average of any faction as well as skills
to facilitate land travel (Logistics and Pathfinding) being common to both its heroes. However, the lack
of water magic takes a major adventure map spell - Town Portal - off the table. To compensate for this,
all Inferno towns have a built-in Town Portal of sorts. These were of very limited use in the original
game since they could only send you to other Inferno towns that also had one of them built; here, they
will teleport you to any other town that you are in control of.

Also worth mentioning is that Inferno's native terrain, "volcano" (previously "lava") is now classified
as rough terrain whereas it wasn't in the original game. Movement penalties for rough terrain are higher
here, with volcano tying swamp as the most difficult to navigate. Inherently ignoring movement penalties
on its native terrain is thus a notable advantage for Inferno on certain maps.

Fire immunity is another important item of note. It behaved differently than other elemental immunities
in the original game, providing blanket immunity to any spell of its element rather than just the direct
damage ones. As with spell immunity by level, this was a double-edged sword which failed to distinguish
between harmful and beneficial spells. Fixing this to act like other elemental immunities was similarly
polarizing since fire magic includes some indirectly offensive spells which are no longer covered, nor
is total immunity (now only partial) to the Armageddon spell. Its impact can still be softened through
other means such as the Fire Resistance spell, but natural immunity to a complete battlefield nuke was
little more than the catalyst for total bullshit strats in the original game that have no place here.

Indifference toward the safety of its own army is another running theme with Inferno, as its spell list
largely indicates. Aside from the above-mentioned Armageddon spell, its semi-unique Sacrifice spell will
revive slain units at the expense of another unit stack. But perhaps the most maligned example of this
trait lies with Inferno's sole ranged attacker: Gogs. The only thing that Inferno's weak ranged attack
game really has going for it is that upgraded Gogs shoot explosive fireballs that can damage multiple
foes... as well as any of your own units nearby. AH3M maintains this property, but does change the
explosion to be completely ineffective against fire-immune units, namely Efreeti and Devils.

Speaking of (the) Devils, they're now much stronger overall, up from one of the worst 7th-level units in
the original game to matching Castle's Angels in nearly every metric - notably tying them as the fastest
and only unit able to cross the entire battlefield unassisted in a single turn. Their lone deficiency is
in their durability, which is significant given that they lose the ability to attack without incurring
retaliation from their foes. Instead, they gain the lore-approved ability to spread disease.

In the original game, this is the second town that new players were expected to use. It provides a good
contrast to Castle's more defensive approach without burdening those who are still learning the basics
with too much more emphasis on magic. That it focuses more on might - albeit only marginally so - makes
Inferno among the most physically offensive factions in the game. This, of course, comes at the expense
of defense, which is the biggest weakness that one will need to overcome when playing as them.

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					    NECROPOLIS
					    ----------

				      MIGHT HERO: Undertaker
				      MAGIC HERO: Necromancer

Though the relationship is less obvious than with other pairings, Necropolis is the game's evil version
of Rampart. While it possesses a similar balance of might vs. magic, it otherwise plays by a special set
of rules that keeps it from falling under the same "average all-rounder" umbrella. The undead are immune
to many things that can be problematic for living units, but also several things which are beneficial to
them. Most notably, non-living units are unaffected by morale - positive or negative - and undead units
specifically are a severe detriment in that regard to any living units in the same army. Necropolis thus
has little interest in mixing units from other factions into its ranks, instead wanting to convert them
by killing them in combat and raising them as zombies or bringing them back home to be converted.

If you're familiar at all with the base game, there's two major points in the above paragraph that need
to be highlighted. The first is morale, which you may have glossed over since it's mostly a non-issue in
the original game, whereas here the formulas have been rewritten to make luck and morale more impactful.
Secondly, the Necromancy skill now raises zombies from the dead rather than skeletons. This is an entire
conversation in and of itself, but the main point is that this takes the trademark Necropolis ability to
amass legions of a single low-level unit and splits it between two. Zombies come from Necromancy as well
as being the result of sticking most living units into a Death Machine (AKA "Skeleton Transformer"), but
you'll still get skeletons from any first-level unit you toss in there and that will still add up to a
substantial amount if you've got a source of peasants or other weak units handy.

This brings us to what is perhaps Necropolis's greatest weakness: it's very slow. There are several fast
units within its ranks, but its hordes of skeletons and zombies will mire your heroes down considerably,
and as with Tower the Logistics skill isn't as common for Necropolis heroes to counteract that penalty.
What really puts Necropolis behind Tower more than anything, however, is that the adventure map spells
which can eventually help Tower overcome its speed deficiency are rare finds in a Necropolis town, as is
expertise in either air or water magic (required to cast them) amongst its heroes. There is one saving
grace here, however, in that Necropolis excels on water maps. It's the only evil town with any affinity
whatsoever for ocean travel and is one of only two factions here where the Sailing skill is common for
both its heroes. Even without Sailing, however, boats don't care how slow your units are.

Statistically speaking, Necropolis leans in the same direction as the other evil factions: attack over
defense and magic power over knowledge. But inversely to Castle - a defensive faction that can be played
offensively - Necropolis is an offensive faction that tends to be played defensively. Yes, thousands of
zombies can pack quite a punch, but their more likely role in most scenarios is that of a massive shield
of rotting meat. This all makes more sense when we look at Necropolis's spell list, because in addition
to its unique unit situation it also plays a much different magic game than the other factions do.

The primary element here is earth, which provides Necropolis with two unique spells. First is the undead
version of the top-level earth spell, Resurrection, except Reanimate is cheaper and far more accessible.
The second is a spell which damages every living unit on the battlefield, which is huge considering that
most other directly offensive spells are either single target or, at most, have a small area of effect.
The remainder of Necropolis's spell list is mostly debuff magic, but given that you're extremely likely
to pull at least one of Necropolis's unique spells in any of its towns, battles will often devolve into
spamming one or both of them. And since they're level two and three spells, respectively, Necropolis is
the one town which can fully build up its mage guild that's arguably the least interested in doing so.

Moving on, we come to an odd thematic inconsistency in the original game. Necropolis heroes cannot learn
First Aid, which before this mod made it better did nothing but make the first aid tent marginally less
shitty. This makes sense: from a thematic standpoint, you can't really give first aid to a corpse, and,
mechanically speaking, a major benefit of the skill in AH3M is that it allows the tent to heal physical
statuses which unliving units are immune to in the first place. For whatever reason, then, Necropolis's
blacksmith sold first aid tents. In AH3M, it sells ballistas. In addition to being far more thematically
appropriate, it also compensates for Necropolis's noticeable lack of an early ranged unit.

Although we've discussed at length Necropolis's considerable focus on its low-level units, a significant
part of what made them so overpowered in the original game was the strength of their higher-level ones.
In particular, the ability of Vampire Lords to absorb health from their targets which can revive their
own dead makes a large enough stack of them nigh-unkillable. Not too far behind them are Liches, whose
"death cloud" ability is basically the same thing as the explosive fireball shots from Inferno's Magogs
except that it doesn't hurt your own units. And while Ghost Dragons are the weakest overall 7th-level
unit, their special ability is one of the best in the game at taking down other powerful units.

And then we have Wraiths. They're a particularly weak unit, both here and in the original game, and were
mostly notable for being fucking obnoxious in multiple stacks due to their ability to drain spell points
from enemy heroes. That power has been replaced here with something more universally effective, as well
as more fitting with the theme of Necropolis: they summon Ghosts (formerly Wights) from everything that
they kill for the remainder of the battle. Players of Heroes of Might & Magic II might recognize this as
a more balanced version of the broken Ghost ability that saw them insta-banned from any serious game.

The unifying theme here, at least with the first four levels, is that Necropolis units are comparatively
weak in small numbers, but far more dangerous in large quantities due to their abilities that allow them
to either regenerate or reproduce on a mass scale. Like Tower, Necropolis is slow to start out, but can
grow completely out of control if left to its own devices. It thrives most against large numbers of low-
level units, but faces its greatest opposition against units that aren't alive and are therefore immune
to the majority of its toolbox. Both of these can be seen when facing Conflux: Sprites are ideal fodder
for Necropolis shenanigans, but the remainder of its troops will completely negate them. Having a weak
7th-level unit actually plays to Necropolis's advantage in cases where its typical strategy fails since
Bone Dragons can provide an early edge if you push to get them quickly enough.

In conclusion, there are many reasons that Necropolis is widely considered to be a massively overpowered
faction in the original game, most of which are still true here. But that alone isn't enough to win, at
least not anymore. Anyone can play as Necropolis and annoy their opponents, but only someone who takes
the time to truly master their unique mechanics can do so and consistently come out on top.

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					    DUNGEON
					    -------

				      MIGHT HERO: Overlord
				      MAGIC HERO: Warlock

The evil equivalent of Tower, Dungeon was originally the only other magic-heavy town in the game until
the introduction of Conflux in the Shadow of Death expansion. While Tower's theme is knowledge and spell
variety with a strong focus on defense, Dungeon goes all in on offense. Seemingly a blunt instrument at
first glance due to its black mage leanings, the subtle difficulty of playing as Dungeon is learning how
to best utilize the army of a faction that's primarily built for zapping its enemies with spells.

Perhaps most illustrative of the above point are Dungeon's second-level units: Harpies. The most common
role of flying units is to quickly reach the other side of the battlefield and block enemy shooters, but
the special (and, might I add, Goddamn annoying) ability of Harpies is to fly over to their targets, hit
them, and then fly back to their starting position. This keeps them safe - which is the point - but it
also makes them function more as a ranged unit than a flying one. Now consider that the next two units
after them are both shooters and you start to get a pretty good picture of what Dungeon combat is about.
It acknowledges that, at least until you reach its beefier units, Dungeon armies are extremely unlikely
to win a fistfight with most other factions, and so it simply prefers not to try.

This is where status effects come into play. Three of Dungeon's units have the ability to set them when
attacking, but given that two of them are shooters they tend to act more in a defensive capacity rather
than an offensive one. That said, Evil Eyes, like Castle's Monks, now possess a ranged attack only when
upgraded to Beholders, who are uniquely able to afflict opponents with both melee and ranged attacks.
Scorpicores, the third status-setter, are particularly valuable since they are not only strong lead-off
units that can incapacitate foes, but they're also the best unit available until you can afford dragons.

Like every other faction, Dungeon's combat mechanics shift dramatically when their 7th-level unit comes
into play. The perennial rivalry between Dungeon's Black Dragons and Tower's Titans dates back to Heroes
of Might & Magic 2 where they were the strongest units in the game by several magnitudes. Although now
beaten out by Castle's Angels, that otherwise remains true here - albeit by a much less severe margin.
The primary metric by which this is measured is durability: Angels, Titans, and Black Dragons have more
health than any other affiliated unit in the game. But while Titans have a ranged attack and the higher
damage output, Black Dragons have the speed advantage and the ability to strike multiple does at once.

As mentioned earlier when talking about Rampart's dragons, their trademark blanket immunity to magic by
spell level has been reworked here into resistance to both magical statuses and damage. This resistance
is substantial enough at least with Black Dragons so as not to constitute too much of a nerf, especially
given the tradeoff that they are now able to be targeted with beneficial spells. What is NOT covered in
the magic resistance package, however, is physical statuses set by units, such as paralyze and petrify,
which become a newfound Achilles heel to a unit previously impervious to all forms of debuffs.

As we saw with Castle and Tower, the downside of having a powerful 7th-level unit is that they're also
expensive and thus tend to show up later. This is a major contributing factor to the fact that Dungeon
is one of the most expensive towns to build up (nearly equal to Tower), as well as the most expensive in
terms of weekly unit buyout. Estates being a primary class skill for Overlords will greatly help offset
the gold costs, and although Dungeon's resource costs are just as steep as Tower's, it doesn't have the
same build-order bottleneck gating its high-level dwellings behind a substantial investment. This allows
Dungeon to put more resources into building up its mage guild early without sacrificing unit growth.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Dungeon's mage guild features directly offensive spells more prominently than it
does anything else. This makes fire and air (in that order) the standout elements by virtue of being the
more offensive ones, but that said the elemental representation is more equal here than with any other
faction so far, even Tower. This even balance does make certain spells less of a guarantee, namely the
new Recall spell that effectively acts as a cheaper version of Town Portal. I single that one spell out
in particular because Dungeon's summoning portal, formerly an 8th dwelling of sorts, now has the ability
to warp the nearest hero on the adventure map to it, ensuring that Dungeon towns can always be defended.

Finally, in the original game, Dungeon's blacksmith sells ballistas. This fits with them as an offensive
faction, but runs contrary to the notion that they prefer to achieve that end primarily through magical
means. Also, we've already given a ballista to Necropolis and Dungeon is the only evil town where a tent
feels even remotely appropriate. Mechanically speaking, it's also a concession for the loss of immunity
to physical statuses on Black Dragons since tents now heal them with the First Aid skill.

A proper summary of Dungeon would mostly just be a copy/paste of the last two paragraphs from the Tower
section to which I would add a cautionary note that, since Dungeon's greatest strength is its offensive
spells, the opponents to watch out for are the towns with the biggest focus on magic resistance, namely
Rampart and Fortress. As stated in the introduction paragraph, while Dungeon may be all about its magic,
learning how to best utilize its "might" half is the ultimate key to mastering it.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

					    STRONGHOLD
					    ----------

				      MIGHT HERO: Barbarian
				      MAGIC HERO: Battlemage

While the good and evil factions all reside at least somewhere near the middle of the balance spectrum,
the "neutral" factions live on the extremes. For Stronghold, that extreme is offense. This comes at the
expense of everything else, specifically defense and magic. That's not to say that neither exist at all
here, but rather that Stronghold's primary defense is a good offense: strike fast and hard before your
enemy can kill you. For Barbarians, this is about as straightforward as the game gets. For Battlemages,
this includes making good use of Stronghold's also rather straightforward spell list.

Perhaps the two most similar factions in the game, at least in this mod, Stronghold plays like a muggle
version of Inferno. This is most apparent in their shared elemental affinities (with fire and air) which
highlight the emphasis of both factions on offense and speed. Battlemages and Hellions both sling mostly
the same list of offensive spells with the same potency, but the latter does so with more sustainability
while the former is very much a hybrid class that doesn't function well as a pure spellcaster. Like with
Castle, Stronghold's theme was hammered home in the original game by limiting their mage guild to level
three, cutting them off from the ever-important Town Portal and Fly spells. Stronghold's mage guild is
now capped at level four, maintaining their jock image without kneecapping them to an unfair degree.

Like Inferno, Stronghold's focus on speed also translates to getting around the adventure map. Logistics
is common to both its heroes (and very important, as we'll see just below), as is the Pathfinding skill
for Barbarians to deal with rough terrain. Furthermore, the native terrain for Stronghold's units - for
which they will inherently ignore its movement penalty - is the most common type of rough terrain.

Stronghold notably differs from Inferno by having much better ranged unit coverage. Because Orcs attack
by throwing axes, they now fall under the same classification as Centaurs by only having a ranged attack
when upgraded and having only two shots when they do. Cyclopses, who throw giant rocks, can still attack
at range even in their base forms, but are otherwise treated the same as Orcs. This is both a benefit in
that all Stronghold units are able to fight well at close range and a weakness in that its ranged combat
is entirely reliant on a war machine that has difficulty keeping up. Unlike in the original game, where
the Ammo Cart had the passive effect of providing unlimited shots to your ranged units, it now actively
replenishes them each turn, which becomes a logistical challenge with multiple limited-shot units.

The rest of Stronghold's units fall in line with the primary "high attack and speed, low defense" theme
of the faction with one notable standout: Ogres. As was the case with Rampart's Dwarves and Dendroids,
these sluggish tanks are often left behind by players of the original game so as not to slow down their
armies, but the Logistics skill overhaul in this mod provides more of a reason to bring them into combat
where they can provide much-needed bulk to Stronghold's otherwise-lean forces.

Of particular interest is Stronghold's 7th-level unit: Behemoths. One trait shared by all of the neutral
factions is that their 7th-level units aren't as powerful as those from the good and evil towns, but are
also cheaper and come much faster. In the original game, Behemoths curiously had the most HP of any 7th-
level unit, which struck me as very contrary to Stronghold's design; that they now possess the lowest HP
amongst 7th-level units is a rather significant downgrade. However, while their attack power is merely
average for their level, that fact alone is misleading. In effect, their ability to ignore a percentage
of their opponent's defense rating puts them in - and possibly above - the same damage tier as Angels,
Devils, and Titans, especially versus units with very high defense (namely other 7th-level units).

Due largely but not entirely to a combination of cheap 7th-level units and mage guilds that cap at the
fourth level, the two muggle factions (Stronghold and Fortress) are far and away the cheapest to manage.
Stronghold in particular is most powerful in the early game when it can press the unit advantage before
its opponents are able to fully build up their towns. Things become much more difficult for Stronghold
when not only other 7th-level units, but also more powerful spells start coming into play, and they'll
want to have asserted their position on the map by the time that happens.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

					    FORTRESS
					    --------

				      MIGHT HERO: Beastmaster
				      MAGIC HERO: Witch

The opposing town to Stronghold, Fortress instead focuses on defense to the near-exclusion of everything
else. This makes for an interesting faction to play since its primary strength is sandbagging as much as
possible to mitigate losses in the early game, which in theory will lead to superior numbers in the mid-
to late game. This creates something of a paradox since Fortress is ostensibly designed to play the long
game, but otherwise possesses the same traits that push Stronghold toward early-game dominance. Playing
Fortress well isn't terribly complicated, but it does require some adaptation and patience.

Whereas Stronghold is basically just an extreme version of Inferno, Fortress is more of a unique flower.
Its closest analog is Rampart in that it is a defense-focused faction with an affinity for earth magic,
But while Rampart gave us earth magic with a side of water and air, Fortress focuses hard on just earth
and water in direct contrast to its rival faction, Stronghold. Furthermore, Fortress to look more like
Tower or Necropolis when we take their units into account. But while they both have powerful offensive
magic to fall back on, Fortress goes all in on the status effect game and demands that you master it.

Even for Beastmasters, a purely might-focused class with no magical abilities to speak of, the above is
true. Among Fortress's ranks are three units with special abilities that set negative statuses on their
enemies. We've seen them before, most notably with Dungeon, but whereas Dungeon is an offensive faction
that tends to apply status effects defensively, Fortress is a defensive faction that relies on them as a
primary form of offense. Dragonflies, who were third-level units for some reason in the original game,
are now the weakest non-peasant units in the game and will quickly be obsoleted outside of their ability
to spread disease. Wyverns, by contrast, are crucial in their role as Fortress's only fast/flying unit,
but the oft-overlooked poison ability of their upgraded forms is an excellent way to wear down even the
strongest of opponents. Where Fortress's real power lies, however, is in their 4th and 5th-level units.

If any one unit could sum up Fortress's approach to combat, it would be Basilisks. They're one of only a
handful of units in the game with a special ability that can disable their opponents, and their upgraded
versions are the melee fighters that can do so with the greatest consistency. Tauruses (AKA Gorgons), on
the other hand, are the closest thing that Fortress has to a purely offensive unit since the status that
they can set (Fortress technically has four status-setters) is instant death. This is widely regarded as
one of the strongest unit abilities in the game and makes Mighty Tauruses amongst the best lv.7 killers.
The bad news here is that there exist towns consisting either mostly (Conflux) or entirely (Necropolis)
of unliving units who are immune to Fortress's bullshit and thus force them to play a directly offensive
game. Thankfully, Fortress has a multitude of buff spells as well as several debuffs that aren't covered
by unliving immunities so that they don't go into battles against such opponents at a disadvantage.

Fittingly, Fortress's 7th-level units - Hydras - are the ultimate tanks. Just as Behemoths are able to
out-damage units with better raw stats due to their special ability, so too are Hydras able to outlast
the likes of Angels, Titans, and Black Dragons despite having less HP due to their regenerative powers,
even moreso in concert with a first aid tent. Alongside their ability to attack every surrounding hex,
this tends to lead to strategies involving baiting foes into dogpiling them. Of course, a human opponent
is usually smart enough to avoid doing so, and Hydras are otherwise difficult to use offensively due to
their critically low speed. They are, at least, a lot cheaper than most other 7th-level units.

While Fortress has the same issues with slow-moving units that Tower and Necropolis both do, they're at
least more adept at getting around the map. First and foremost, Fortress's affinity for water magic is a
particular boon since they, like Stronghold, are now able to build their mage guild up to level four and
thus have access to Town Portal. Logistics is a common skill for Beastmasters whereas Witches are more
likely to pick up Sailing for faster water travel. Their major strength in this regard, however, is in
dealing with rough terrain. Pathfinding is a major skill for Fortress, and while their native terrain
isn't as common as Stronghold's is, it's one of the hardest to get through otherwise.

Finally, a major advantage of Fortress is that it's the one of the cheapest towns in the game along with
Stronghold. But while Stronghold needs to press that early advantage, Fortress tends to play the longer
game. Both factions want to leverage their low costs to build out quickly, but Fortress is often slower
to act. It prefers to outgrow rather than overrun its opposition earlier on and, unlike Stronghold, is
very well-equipped to go up against an opponent with powerful magic when the time comes.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

					    CONFLUX
					    -------

				      MIGHT HERO: Guardian
				      MAGIC HERO: Mystic

On the far opposite end of the scale from both Stronghold and Fortress, Conflux rounds out the roster as
our third major magic faction. While Tower is more defensively focused and Dungeon offensive, Conflux is
simply pure magic. However, to call its execution in the original game half-assed would be entirely too
generous. Conflux was an eleventh-hour pivot in the wake of negative reaction to the originally-planned
"Forge" faction which sought to introduce the trademark sci-fi elements of the mainline series into the
strictly fantasy-based setting of its spinoff and the resulting time crunch is clearly apparent in every
facet of the final product. It does manage to present some interesting ideas, which I took and attempted
to the absolute best of my abilities to flesh out into something coherent.

Aside from its focus on magic, Conflux is mostly characterized by its unique unit structure. Rather than
seven units of increasing power, the bulk of Conflux's army consists of elementals of roughly equivalent
power. This was the idea, at least - in practice, the expansion ended up changing their stats around to
make them progressive and the result was the worst of both worlds. It was enough to ruin their symmetry
by making Earth and Fire Elementals stronger than Air and Water, but not enough to make them fit in with
their new levels: Air Elementals became a ridiculously overpowered 2nd-level unit while Earth Elementals
became the game's most woefully underpowered 5th-level unit.

AH3M goes all in on the envisioned concept of a lateral unit structure, equalizing not only the power of
the elementals - renamed here to "Avatars" so as to avoid confusion when using the term "elemental" in
other contexts - but also the build order and costs of their dwellings. The twist is in the upgrades:
the four base avatars are treated as 3rd-level units while their upgrades are 4th-level. This creates a
massive price gap; Conflux goes from being the cheapest town by a large margin in terms of unit buyout
if you purchase only the base units to by far the costliest if you only buy upgrades. Conflux is also as
resource-hungry as Tower and Dungeon counting the upgraded dwellings, but is otherwise relatively cheap.

Unlike other towns, Conflux doesn't favor any one particular resource and requires an equal mix of them
all to fully build up. The only point of divergence is their 7th-level unit, Firebirds, whose dwellings
demand an equal mix of rare resources to build but require additional mercury to recruit. Firebirds are
useful mainly because they're cheap and, like Hydras and Behemoths, can show up earlier than other, more
powerful 7th-level units. Also like those, Firebirds are in the upper echelon of 7th-level units for a
single metric - speed, in this case - despite being one of the weakest overall. This is important since
it plays to Conflux's strengths: their time in the spotlight as a powerhouse unit is limited, but their
ability to secure spellcasting initiative in combat never wanes.

As for the remainder of Conflux's units, Sprites are amongst the most aggravating opponents in the game
despite being as weak as flies due to their trademark ability to attack without their targets being able
to retaliate - as well as the newfound ability of their upgrades to remove positive statuses from their
targets. This is a particularly important ability due to the fact that the elemental resistance spells
now also reduce physical damage from elemental avatars. Mind (AKA "Psychic") Avatars and their upgrades
continue the earlier theme by acting as fifth and sixth-level units, respectively. Their ability to hit
every surrounding opponent makes them function similarly to Hydras, often leading to dogpile strats.

Another unique aspect of Conflux is that all of its heroes - even its might ones - begin with elemental
magic skills rather than the two most common skills for their class. Further magic skills are available
for purchase at one of its unique buildings: the Magic University. This is a necessary tool since, true
to its theme, Conflux's mage guild is a totally even mix of all four elements and can contain any spell
in the game. The lack of any real focus means that what you get is almost completely random, and so it's
often better to buy magic skills after you know what spells are available rather than blindly guessing.

As the game's most magic-oriented faction, all of the combat skills (i.e. Offense, Armorer, Archery) are
uncommon even for its might heroes. Instead, Guardians focus heavily on adventure skills like Logistics
and Sailing, making them excellent explorer heroes. One such skill, Diplomacy, is notable here since the
four basic elemental avatars are now more commonly rolled as random units on the map in addition to the
fact that every month is now a guaranteed "growth" month that will spawn them en masse. Aside from that,
Conflux heroes are similar to Necropolis heroes in that morale is useless to them because avatars aren't
alive, but since they aren't unDEAD they won't be an active detriment to any other units you recruit.

Conflux does not lean toward either offense or defense like every other faction does; both are at a bare
minimum so far as its "might" half is concerned, so how it approaches combat depends largely on how the
dice roll for their mage guild. Ideally (and quite likely), you'll pull a decent offensive spell or two
and end up playing them like Dungeon. Conflux's army contains two shooters and four fliers, so keep-away
is the game it wants to play if you've got the magical firepower to keep up. Failing that, Conflux plays
more like Tower or, worst case, falls short and ends up in Fortress territory.

This is, at least, the case for Mystics, who are the most potent and sustainable spellcasters in the
game. Guardians, on the other hand, are much trickier to play as because, like Battlemages and Witches,
they go against type and end up as a hybrid class. The difference is that Guardians tend to have it much
harder than the other hybrid classes due to a combination of the volatility of Conflux's mage guild and
Diplomacy being their only major combat-related skill, thus forcing a stronger need for adaptability.

As is generally the case with expansion-pack content, Conflux was designed with veteran players in mind
and is best experienced by those already familiar with the rest of the game. Its unusual unit structure
takes the established convention of quadratic growth for magically-aligned characters (which we've seen
already with Tower and Dungeon) and tosses it into a blender. While generally regarded as an overpowered
town in the original game due mostly to poor balance decisions made in haste, that's no longer the case
here. You can play as Conflux and win in AH3M, but just like every other faction you'll have to earn it.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------




				    3. HEROES & SKILLS




---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Heroes are fundamentally designed around four core attributes: Attack, Defense, Magic, and Knowledge.
Attack and Defense are added directly to the stats of a hero's units, while Magic increases the potency
of their spells and Knowledge represents their pool of mana, or "spell points", with which to cast them.
All four function the same here as they did in the original game with only one change of note: the caps
for Attack and Defense. The damage formula compares the attack value of an attacking unit stack to the
defense value of the defending stack and then either adds 5% to the damage total for each attack point
that's higher than the defense or subtracts 2.5% for each point of defense in the reverse case. These
modifiers originally capped at triple damage for +40 Attack and 30% damage for +28 Defense. Attack and
Defense now cap at 250% and 25% damage, respectively, both at a value of 30 higher than the opponent.

Moving on, classes are more distinct here than in the original game. While their base stats and initial
growth remain largely similar, there is no longer a shift toward completely even growth beyond the 10th
level; this is of particular note for classes with more extreme leanings such as Barbarians and Wizards.
More notably, each class now has a unique starting skill - including magic classes, who no longer simply
get Wisdom as a global default. This, along with a second skill that is more commonly available to them
than any other, comprise their "major" skillset that helps to define the unique identity of each class.

    o-------------o-----------------------------------------------------o---------------------------o
    | HERO CLASS  | ATTACK       DEFENSE      MAGIC        KNOWLEDGE    | (STARTING) & MAJOR SKILLS |
    o-------------o-----------------------------------------------------o---------------------------o
    | Knight      | Good         Excellent    Awful        Awful        | (Leadership)  Estates     |
    | Cleric      | Poor         Poor         Good         Good         | (First Aid)   Water Magic |
    o-------------o-----------------------------------------------------o---------------------------o
    | Ranger      | Good         Good         Awful        Poor         |*(Archery)     Logistics   |
    | Druid       | Awful        Poor         Good         Excellent    | (Resistance)  Earth Magic |
    o-------------o-----------------------------------------------------o---------------------------o
    | Alchemist   | Average      Good         Awful        Average      | (Learning)    Armorer     |
    | Wizard      | Awful        Poor         Good         Excellent    | (Wisdom)      Air Magic   |
    o-------------o-----------------------------------------------------o---------------------------o
    | Sentinel    | Excellent    Good         Awful        Awful        | (Luck)        Pathfinding |
    | Hellion     | Poor         Poor         Good         Good         | (Mysticism)   Fire Magic  |
    o-------------o-----------------------------------------------------o---------------------------o
    | Undertaker  | Good         Good         Poor         Awful        | (Tactics)     Sailing     |
    | Necromancer | Poor         Awful        Excellent    Good         | (Necromancy)  Earth Magic |
    o-------------o-----------------------------------------------------o---------------------------o
    | Overlord    | Good         Average      Average      Awful        | (Estates)     Scouting    |
    | Warlock     | Poor         Awful        Excellent    Good         | (Sorcery)     Fire Magic  |
    o-------------o-----------------------------------------------------o---------------------------o
    | Barbarian   | Excellent    Good         Awful        Awful        | (Offense)     Ballistics  |
    | Battlemage  | Average      Poor         Good         Average      | *Offense      Sorcery     |
    o-------------o-----------------------------------------------------o---------------------------o
    | Beastmaster | Good         Excellent    Awful        Awful        | (Armorer)     Pathfinding |
    | Witch       | Poor         Average      Average      Good         | *Resistance   Wisdom      |
    o-------------o-----------------------------------------------------o---------------------------o
    | Guardian    | Average      Average      Average      Average      | *Diplomacy    Logistics   |
    | Mystic      | Awful        Awful        Excellent    Excellent    | *Mysticism    (All) Magic |
    o-------------o-----------------------------------------------------o---------------------------o

			*There are a few exceptions to starting skills:

		 Dwarven Rangers start with Resistance instead of Archery
		 Battlemages start with Fire or Air Magic instead of Offense
		 Witches start with Water or Earth Magic instead of Resistance
		 All Conflux heroes start with magic skills instead of Diplomacy or Mysticism

Further stressing the individuality of classes is the fact that it's now far less likely to find heroes
who aren't affiliated with your starting faction in your taverns. While before it was almost completely
random, the odds are now a 1/3 chance of your starting faction's "might" hero, 1/3 of its "magic" hero,
else one of a chosen handful of classes whose alignment doesn't oppose yours (i.e. evil heroes will not
appear in good taverns and vise versa). The external classes which can appear also depend on whether the
faction is more physically or magically inclined - Castle attracts more "might" heroes from other towns,
for example, while Tower is more likely to find their "magic" heroes.

Several over improvements have been made to how taverns handle heroes. First and foremost, heroes who
escape from combat via retreat or surrender are no longer lost on the week rollover. They now occupy a
special slot that does not remove either existing hero in the tavern and will remain in that slot until
either re-hired or replaced with another escaped hero. Secondly, external taverns on the adventure map
will now contain different heroes than the ones in your town and will be less likely to be heroes from
your own faction. Escaped heroes can appear in the right slot of either tavern, temporarily overriding
but again not actually replacing the hero that would normally be in that slot.

	-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Specialty bonuses - the primary individualizing feature amongst heroes within the same class - have been
overhauled here. Gold and resource bonuses have been removed along with Sir "Banned" Mullich, leaving us
with just unit, spell, and skill specialists. These have all been edited in a broad sense, most notably
in that unit and spell bonuses are static and no longer scale with level. Most skill bonuses still scale
with level, but the formula is now linear rather than quadratic.

Take, for example, Crag Hack's infamous Offense specialty in the original game. At basic level, Offense
is a 10% bonus to all melee damage. Under the original formula, a 1st-level Crag Hack would receive a
multiplicative bonus of 5% to that 10%, meaning the bonus would be 10.5% (since 0.05 * 0.10 = 0.005).
However, a 20th-level Crag Hack would see the 30% bonus from mastered Offense doubled to 60%, and things
would only get more nuts if he kept gaining levels from there. Here, the bonus is a simple +1% per level
or its equivalent (i.e. +1 spell point per level for Mysticism specialists) for most skills. AH3M also
institutes a hard level cap at 30, which in turn will cap these specialties.

Heroes with unit specialties now have static bonuses depending on the unit type which further highlight
the rock/paper/scissors-esque relationship they share: ranged units get more damage output, flying units
get faster, and melee units get more health. This is in addition to a standard bonus of +3 to Attack and
Defense for all specialists. 7th-level unit specialists, which did not exist in the original game, get a
bonus of all three to compensate for the fact that their specialty comes into play much later than those
of other heroes. Heroes now also come with the units in which they specialize with the exception of 7th-
level unit specialists for reasons that are hopefully obvious.

This is probably also a good time to mention that heroes will now always come with all three unit stacks
(or two stacks with a ballista/tent) instead of the second and third stacks being randomized. The number
of units in each stack is still random, but the range of values has been significantly narrowed. Do note
that this is still subject to the rule of any hero beyond the initial two to populate your tavern at the
start of each week only coming with a single troop to prevent early rush strats.

As with unit specialist heroes, those with spell specialties now also come with the relevant school of
magic as a secondary starting skill, thus ensuring that they'll be able to cast that spell to maximum
effect. The bonuses for spell specialties vary considerably and have been changed up quite a bit here,
most of them becoming significantly more powerful in the process. Status and support spell bonuses still
mostly scale with the level of their target unit while directly offensive spells ditch the formula that
made them marginally more powerful only on the lowest-level units in favor of a flat percentage bonus.

In a nutshell, heroes with spell and low-level unit specialties are strongest in the early game whereas
those with skill and high-level unit specialties are more powerful later on. That said, nearly everyone
is much stronger right out of the gate here since the specialties are now much better overall.

	-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As one might expect from a complete balance overhaul, the natural skill growth rates for each class have
all been changed here (see the Printme for a list of every skill and their odds of being learned by each
class). Note that the probability table has been simplified from the original 1-10 scale to just four:

					  (M)ajor
					  (C)ommon
					  (U)ncommon
					  (R)are

Magic skills are an exception due to the rule that requires them to be offered at least once every four
(for might heroes) or three (for magic heroes) levels. But while they end up being more common overall
due to this, they are now less common outside of those forced intervals - especially for might heroes.
That said, this is why there are no rare magic skills for any class and several "C+" (very common) ones.

It will become increasingly apparent to anyone who has played the mainline Might & Magic games how much
inspiration this mod takes from them as we continue, but there is an important nomenclature note to be
made before going any further: there is no such thing as "advanced" skill expertise in them.

				    Basic -> Expert -> Master

I'm sure that will cause absolutely no confusion whatsoever for people who've spent two decades getting
used to what the original game called them. As for changes to the skills themselves...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

					MOVEMENT SKILLS
					---------------

Logistics is widely considered to be one of the most overpowered skills in the original game, which is
not exactly correct. A more accurate statement would be that it's the most universally useful skill, so
it's an obvious pick whenever it gets offered. Now, rather than a flat bonus to movement points, it sets
a minimum unit speed for movement point calculation. Logistics is thus still a flat bonus in most cases,
but it will have less of an (or no) effect on an army comprised only of fast-moving units. So instead of
allowing a hero with only fast units to outpace everyone else, Logistics is now more about letting those
with slower units keep up. This, in turn, acts as a much-needed buff to said slower units.

(On a related note, a common strategy in the original game was to garrison all but a hero's fastest unit
when ending their turn in a town to maximize movement for the following turn. Here, movement points are
simply based on a hero's fastest unit instead of their slowest when their turn begins in a town.)

	-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Since Pathfinding is just a situational version of vanilla Logistics, its effects are obviously going to
be a lot stronger whenever it comes into play. The concept is perfectly sound - its only problems in the
original game were the staggered execution (advanced skill only affected snow/sand/swamp and expert only
swamp) and lava not counting as rough terrain, both of which left Pathfinding decidedly TOO situational.
Here, Pathfinding reduces the movement cost for all rough terrains with each level of skill attained and
lava (now "volcano") is among them. Further, the movement penalties for rough terrain are higher in this
mod than they were before, ranging from +40% (wasteland) to +80% (swamp and volcano).

	-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sailing (formerly Navigation) is by far the most situational of the three movement skills - to the point
of being useless on any map that doesn't feature water travel (which is many of them). It's niche enough
that I had no issue with increasing its effectiveness to make it more useful whenever it does come into
play - including having it now lower the turn cost for boarding and unboarding - but I drew the line at
specialist heroes. It's one thing to have a skill that's highly desirable on some maps and literal trash
on others, but it's quite another to have a hero like that. Some heroes still do start with Sailing as a
secondary skill; on maps where Sailing is banned because there isn't any (or is very little) water, they
will instead start out with their other major class skill (i.e. Estates for Sylvia the Knight).

	-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Finally, we have Scouting: a skill that no amount of buffing could fix due the fact that it was a purely
informational skill of thus limited use. And so, additionally to increasing the map visibility radius of
your hero, Scouting also now acts as a fourth movement skill by allowing them to "bank" a certain amount
of unused movement points for their next turn. This complements the initial effect of greater vision by
allowing players to more easily navigate around and avoid fighting enemy heroes.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

					    DIPLOMACY
					    ---------

Diplomacy was an extremely polarizing and potentially massively overpowered skill in the original game
due to how hard its effects could snowball without any restrictions. Somewhat paradoxically, its binary
nature also meant that it could just as easily fall flat and have no effect at all depending on how the
dice rolled for random enemy units. The goal with editing this skill, then, was to make it have a more
"sliding scale" impact on enemy join offers rather than being a hard pass/fail against a random value.

To this end, it's now possible for ANY random unit to join unless manually set to maximum aggression in
the map editor. The catch is that not only will all joins cost gold, but aggression - the aforementioned
random value - will act as a multiplier to that cost. So while any unit CAN possibly offer to join, they
won't do so unless you can afford to pay. And without the Diplomacy skill, which now functions solely to
substantially reduce those costs, you won't be able to in almost any case.

More specifically, aggression is now a direct multiplier to the cost of joining units, with 1 being base
cost, 2 being 1.5x, 3 being 2x, 4 being 2.5x, and so on. There are five settings for unit aggression in
the map editor, but the vast majority use the middle (default) setting, which is 1~10 in the original
game. AH3M narrows these ranges considerably in light of the new join offer system like so:

					Complaint: (Always joins for free)
					 Friendly: 1~4 (base cost ~ 2.5x)
					(Default): 3~7 (2x ~ 4x cost)
					  Hostile: 6~9 (3.5x ~ 5x cost)
					   Savage: (Never joins)

Furthermore, there existed a "sympathy" mechanic in the original game wherein units would be more likely
to join if you already had one such unit in your army, and even moreso if it comprised the majority of
your army. This system has been replaced with an alignment check, which will instead impose penalties of
increased aggression of random units toward heroes with conflicting alignments:

				    Good hero vs. evil unit: +2
				    Evil hero vs. good unit: +2
			     Unit from hero's rival faction: +4 (total)

To clarify, the above-mentioned "rival" factions are Castle/Inferno, Rampart/Necropolis, Tower/Dungeon,
and Stronghold/Fortress/Conflux (all three are treated as rivals to one another).

In the original game, heroes received a one-level bonus to their Diplomacy skill - even if they did not
have it at all - when playing on the easiest difficulty setting. Here, that bonus is instead applied to
heroes who specialize in the target random unit. It will still provide a bonus even if the hero does not
possess the skill, but will not apply if Diplomacy is already at master level.

Finally, join offers are also still subject to the initial strength comparison of your army vs. theirs,
with your hero's Attack/Defense and Diplomacy acting as a bonus to your own army and aggression added to
theirs. However, unlike in the original game, Diplomacy will NOT be factored in to whether the unit will
fight or flee if the offer fails due to lack of funds or is rejected. In other words, Diplomacy can make
a random unit that would otherwise fight you offer to join, but not any more likely to run away.

	-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As for the in-depth explanation, every unit in the game has two AI values: "fight" and "AI". Fight value
is used to determine which unit stack the AI will prioritize attacking while AI value is used primarily
to calculate army strength. These values were fairly sensible in the original game with a few standouts.
Archers and Marksmen, for example, had identical fight values, leading the AI to consider a stack of 37
Archers to be a bigger threat than 36 Marksmen. Several other upgraded units have the same problem, with
fight values either identical to or insignificantly higher than their base forms. The other major issue
is that the original values severely overvalued 7th-level units, particularly their upgrades.

Since there was no real point so far as I could tell to maintain both of these as separate values, they
have both been recalculated according to the following formula:

		 FIGHT/AI VALUE: (HP * (SPD + (!) + Lv.)) + ((ATK + Lv.) * (DEF + Lv.))

			      (! = lower of shots;speed, ranged units only)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

					    NECROMANCY
					    ----------

As mentioned earlier, Necromancy now raises Zombies instead of Skeletons. Beyond that, the formula has
been greatly simplified, removing the factor of enemy unit health in favor of raising zombies at a 1:1
ratio of slain units. Thus, killing 60 Peasants with Basic Necromancy (10%) will now give you 6 Zombies.
As this is ostensibly more potent than the original formula, the effects of expert and master Necromancy
as well as the bonus from the Necro amplifier have been lowered to compensate.

The original formula was sort of a huge mess due to the hard restrictions it had in place to prevent it
from being overpowered (which it was anyway). Since it was based on total health rather than the number
of units killed, it hard-prevented you from raising more units than you killed. However, this approach
would lose a significant amount of yield to rounding since it calculated each unit stack individually:
you'd raise less Skeletons from the same number of enemy units when they were grouped into more stacks.
The purpose of using total health rather than the number of units was, similarly, to prevent raising too
many Skeletons from the select few units that had less health than them - Peasants, very specifically.
This isn't an issue here primarily since the random enemy unit growth formula is no longer exponential,
thus preventing wandering Peasants from growing to ridiculous numbers if left alone for too long.

This brings us to an important secondary change, which is that Necromancy can no longer harvest unliving
units, i.e. Gargoyles, Golems, and elemental avatars. More broadly, this umbrella includes units which
are already undead - you can't make zombies out of other zombies. Although this encompasses just a small
portion of the overall unit population, it is a somewhat notable nerf to Necropolis in light of the fact
that growth months - famously known in the original game for being an all-you-can-eat Necromancer buffet
if the dice happened to roll their way - now always produce elemental avatars.

See also the changes to the Cloak of the Lich King later on.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

					LEADERSHIP & LUCK
					-----------------

Leadership and Luck are unchanged directly, but this is a good place to discuss how the formulas which
they impact were overhauled. Originally, morale and luck were values which couldn't exceed 3 in either
direction, with each point conveying a 4.1666~% chance of gaining an extra turn (morale) or dealing 2x
damage (luck). Considering the abundance of methods to raise them, the restrictively low cap for morale
and luck values greatly diminished the worth of those individual bonuses. Compounding this was the fact
that, even with a maximum value of 3, the odds of seeing a result (12.5%) weren't significant enough to
be competitive. For a case-in-point example, consider the value of the Leadership and Luck skills in the
original game: both were derided primarily because they were redundant with several artifacts and map
objects, but even putting that fact aside they were still uncompetitive with other, better skills.

Here, the divisor for the bonus is 16 instead of 24, meaning each point is now worth 6.25%. Further, the
maximum/minimum value is now +8/-4, meaning you can potentially achieve a whopping 50% chance of getting
extra turns or dealing double damage. The factions most affected by this are Castle (focuses heavily on
morale) and Inferno (focuses on luck). Several towns, most notably Necropolis, also get a powerful new
weapon with the Fear spell due to the fact that negative morale remains twice as effective here: an army
with neutral morale will lose 37.5% of their turns to an expert-level casting.

The graphical representation of luck and morale bonuses have also been updated to accommodate these new
caps. Each image now represents a range rather than an exact value: one horseshoe/eagle denotes a bonus
of 1~2, two horseshoes/eagles for 3~4, and three for 5~6. For values of 7 or higher, a plus sign will be
overlaid on top of the three horseshoe/eagle graphic to indicate the highest bonus has been reached.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

				   FIRST AID, BALLISTICS, & ARTILLERY
				   ----------------------------------

Skills tied to war machines were very problematic in the original game for a variety of reasons, chiefly
amongst them that war machines were made of tissue paper and were difficult/expensive to replace, and so
you ended up with what was basically a dead skill 90% of the time. First of all, broken war machines are
now simply disabled until they are repaired by a blacksmith (which costs nothing) rather than needing to
be bought again. Secondly, there now exists a "Repair" spell that can both heal damaged war machines as
well as repair destroyed ones. Finally, the actual durability of said war machines was a difficult thing
to approach due to the "Poke Doll" effect: too little health renders them effectively useless in serious
combat whereas any more than that turns them into punching bags for trash randoms. My compromise was to
base the health of war machines on your hero's level, (hopefully) avoiding both of those problems.

	-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Because combat in Heroes of Might & Magic is more about volume rather than the bulk of individual units,
there's generally little value in the ability to heal a single one of them until you get to the absolute
strongest units available that can actually take a hit without dying. Even then, requiring a skill to be
able to choose which unit stack to heal was retarded and the fact that it restored a minimum of 1 health
regardless of your skill was somehow even more retarded. First Aid tents no longer require the skill to
be targetable and will now heal between 25 and 50 HP. This is the baseline effectiveness with no skill.

The first benefit of the First Aid skill is that it allows the tent to heal physical statuses instead of
just health. These are the statuses set by enemy units as opposed to spells and include the following:

					Disease   Blind
					Petrify   Poison
					Paralyze  Aging

Beyond that, First Aid focuses to combat the above-mentioned issue of the tent being non-valuable due to
the relative weakness of individual units by allowing the tent to heal them beyond their maximum health,
up to twice their normal amount. Both of these benefits are then compounded at First Aid mastery, which
will allow the tent to act twice every turn. Worth mentioning here is that the Cure spell now requires
Water Magic to remove statuses and is no longer mass target, making First Aid the most efficient way of
removing physical status effects from your army en masse.

	-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It always felt odd that Ballistics and Artillery were different skills in the original game given both
their similar effects and their massive individual unpopularity. As with the medical tent, skill is no
longer required for either to be manually controllable. The same rule applies to defensive turrets (AKA
arrow towers), which is important to note here since it means that the defending hero will always have
spellcasting initiative in siege battles if they are present.

That said, tying the effectiveness of the catapult to a skill at all felt inappropriate given not only
its niche application, but that the niche in question was one that had no business being gated in the
first place. Thus, the Ballistics skill now simply concerns the effectiveness of the ballista (because
that makes sense) while the catapult has been reworked to be effective in any case and Artillery simply
no longer exists as a separate skill. The catapult will now always fire either one or two shots, each
dealing 1~2 damage, and will always retarget for the second shot. The tradeoff is that they must now be
purchased in town (all Blacksmiths sell them in addition to another war machine) rather than heroes all
coming pre-equipped with one. Finally, the durability of siege defense structures now varies by both the
individual segment (drawbridge, inner/outer walls, and main/side turrets) as well as the type of town.

As for the ballista, because it is a single unit rather than a stack of them, it uses a special damage
formula to deal damage that is actually significant. This mod increases its base damage, and with those
changes in mind the ballista's damage formula can be expressed thusly:

				Ballista = Damage (5-10) * (Hero Level + 1)

The Ballistics skill removes the ballista's range penalty at basic level, doubles its damage at expert,
and allows it to fire two shots at master. In short, it basically just makes the ballista do 8x damage.

	   (See also the Artifacts section for Ammo Carts & war machine availability by town)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

					    RESISTANCE
					    ----------

Another unpopular skill in the original game due to its situational usefulness is Resistance: powerful
when up against an enemy hero, but otherwise worthless... at first glance, at least. In truth, it also
invisibly helped defend against negative statuses set by enemy units. It still does so here, and is much
more useful in that capacity since, as we'll get to below, negative statuses are now far more prevalent.
Further, the player is now informed whenever Resistance protects units from being inflicted with them.

The actual mechanical change here is that Resistance now reduces rather than eliminates magical damage
(i.e. defense, not evasion). The big selling point is that this classification now includes units which
shoot non-physical projectiles. More specifically, Resistance now reduces damage from shots fired by:

				Gogs & Magogs		Zealots
				Mages & Archmages	Titans
				Liches & Power Liches	Beholders
				Storm & Magma Avatars	Enchanters

Furthermore, shots from these units are now also elemental, meaning that they will consider any inherent
elemental resistances or weaknesses of their target (which will be discussed more in the "units" section
below) as well as the appropriate elemental resistance spells rather than the Shield spell (as detailed
in the "spells" section). For now, the key distinction to remember between the Resistance skill and the
elemental resistance spells is that the skill only lowers magical damage - from spells or shots - while
the spells also reduce physical damage dealt by melee attacks from elemental avatars. The exceptions to
this are Mind and Magic Avatars, whose melee attacks are considered magical rather than physical damage.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

					MYSTICISM & INTELLIGENCE
					------------------------

Mysticism was a redundant skill in the original game since it and Intelligence both aimed to accomplish
the same thing, except one of them was ludicrously overpowered and the other was trash even without the
competition. At master level, Intelligence was a 150% boost to spell points (imagine that same value on
any of the other skills that are effectively just boosts to base stats, like Offense or Sorcery) while
Mysticism at the same level regenerated an entire four spell points every day. Of the two, Mysticism is
the more mechanically balanced since it retains a greater emphasis on the value of raising Knowledge to
be effective whereas Intelligence acted more as a substitute for it. Thus, Mysticism was buffed while
Intelligence was removed. The latter's mechanic, however, was added to the Learning skill (see below).

Mysticism now acts as a significant boost to a hero's natural mana regeneration rate, which now depends
on the percentage of unused movement points left over from their previous turn:

					 0-24% = 1 spell point
					25-49% = 2 spell points
				 	50-74% = 3 spell points
					  75+% = 4 spell points

The decision to stick with static values rather than a percentage of your maximum spell points was made
so that Mysticism can be effective even on heroes with low knowledge, allowing them to be mostly or even
entirely self-sustaining in the field. See also the changes to spell costs in section four; cheaper low-
level spells means you can get more mileage here out of just a few spell points than you could before.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

					    LEARNING
					    --------

Since Learning is just a buff to experience gains, any discussion of it is really going to be about the
leveling system in its entirety. Learning was a fairly maligned skill in the base game simply due to its
ineffectiveness: at best, it would keep you a level or two ahead of your peers and simply was not worth
the wasted skill slot. Making it more useful was ostensibly a simple matter of buffing it, but the flip
side of that coin is the experience table itself - all the buffing in the world won't do a whole lot of
good if the ultimate result is still just an extra level or two for your investment.

For the first twenty levels - which is the most you'll see in a typical match - AH3M's experience table
is virtually identical to that of the original game. Beyond that point is where they deviate, with the
vanilla graph taking a sharp upward turn due to the exponential formula while the new one continues on a
relatively linear path. In other words, while growth began to stagnate around level twenty in the base
game, thus allowing other heroes to catch up, it's easier here for heroes with Learning to remain ahead
until the cap is reached at level 30 (a cap which did not exist in the original game).

The inherent problem at this point is that Learning becomes a skill that is very valuable to have in the
early game, but effectively useless in the late game. To combat this, it now also increases your hero's
spell points like the Intelligence skill did. However, rather than a percentage-based buff to base spell
points, the bonus is now a product of your hero's level. This provides the inverse of Learning's primary
effect: completely insignificant in the early game, but more substantial later on.

The above bonus is compounded by the fact that Knowledge is the hardest of the four stats to raise with
equipment. There is also no longer any way to raise your spell points beyond the cap aside from lowering
your knowledge by removing equipment, and any resulting overflow will now be removed on turn rollover.
For this reason, Learning pairs especially well with the new Wisdom skill, as we'll get to just below.

	-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Moreover, the experience gain from combat has also been overhauled. Previously a conversion of the total
health of slain enemy units to experience, it's now their total AI value divided by 12. This is far more
appropriate since the AI formula (see the Diplomacy section just above) considers all of a unit's stats
rather than just one of them. The overall result is a small net increase in experience for most units,
with larger gains seen for sixth and especially seventh-level units.

The original game awarded a static bonus of 500 experience each for winning siege battles and/or battles
against enemy heroes. Here, those bonuses are now multipliers: 12.5% for siege combat and 25% for enemy
heroes. This prevents the player from getting an unreasonably large amount of experience from killing a
single peasant guarding a town or escorting a scout hero while simultaneously substantially increasing
the reward for winning a particularly challenging battle against an enemy hero with a large army.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

				       WISDOM & MAGIC SKILLS
				       ---------------------

One of the most major, if not the most significant change in this mod is to how the game handles spell
restrictions. High-level spells now require their requisite elemental skill instead of Wisdom as a sort
of catch-all gate. Low-level spells may still be cast without any skill, but do not see benefits beyond
basic skill (for first-level spells) or expert (for second-level). This creates a more linear sense of
progression where, say, master Fire Magic now allows fifth-level spells while buffing third and fourth-
level spells instead of putting all of your fire spells from level one to five in their final state.

Of note is that magic skills are required to CAST high-level spells, not to learn them. Another major
change here is to how spells are learned in the first place: rather than being acquired automatically by
any visiting hero, they are now manually purchased from the Mage Guild. This is meant both to make the
mage guild a more interactive screen and to prevent your spellbook from being filled with unwanted crap.

As in the original game, spell scrolls allow you bypass any skill requirements for the spell it offers.
Newly to AH3M, scrolls also allow spells to be cast at a minimum of basic skill, which as we just saw
above is the maximum effectiveness for first-level spells. Scrolls were not very common in the original
game since they had to be manually placed on maps with no options for randomization. Here, they can be
purchased from spell shrines on the map as opposed to simply being taught the spell and are also sold at
Tower town mage guilds after the Magic Library has been built.

This all comes together with Wisdom, which now allows heroes to cast more than one spell per round of
combat with the caveat that each spell must be of a different element. This restriction serves not just
to keep Wisdom from being ridiculously overpowered, but also to encourage the use of spells that might
otherwise collect dust. In particular, lower-level spells for which the hero has no skill generally go
unused and Wisdom effectively converts them from clear worse choices to an added bonus to better spells.
Furthermore, this also serves to help keep Knowledge from reaching a point of diminishing returns due to
allowing more opportunity to utilize a deep mana pool in a single battle.

Note that, as with elemental magic skills, Wisdom also followed a rule in the original game wherein it
had to be offered at least once every X levels to keep the game from being utterly unplayable by might
heroes. That rule now only applies to the elemental magic skills, which serve Wisdom's former function.

Magic itself will be covered in more detail further below in section five. For now, let's move on.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

					SCHOLAR & EAGLE EYE
					-------------------

		       ________________   ___/-\___     ___/-\___     ___/-\___
		     / /             ||  |---------|   |---------|   |---------|
		    / /              ||   | | | | |     | | | | |     | | | | |
		   / /             __||   | | | | |     | | | | |     | | | | |
		  / /   \\        /  ||   | | | | |     | | | | |     | | | | |
		 (-------------------||   | | | | |     | | | | |     | | | | |
		 ||               == ||   |_______|     |_______|     |_______|
		 ||  ACME TRASH CO.  | =============================================
		 ||          ____    |                                ____      |
		( | o      / ____ \                                 / ____ \    |)
		 ||      / / . . \ \                              / / . . \ \   |
		[_|_____| | .   . | |____________________________| | .   . | |__]
			  | .   . |                                | .   . |
			   \_____/                                  \_____/

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

				      As for everything else...

    Armorer and Sorcery have both been buffed, but there's not much else to say about them otherwise

    Archery's effect has been lowered to equal Offense (unchanged) and no longer affects the Ballista

    Estates is only 100 gold at basic level instead of 125; expert and master are unchanged

    Tactics no longer spams you with a tutorial message at the beginning of every battle

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------




				    4. MIGHT (UNIT CHANGES)




---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

One of the many ways in which Heroes of Might & Magic 3 appreciably built upon its predecessors was that
it went all-in on the idea that every unit should be somehow unique, even if in a wholly inconsequential
way (i.e. Pikemen disregarding the "jousting" bonus of Horsemen). It did the same thing with the concept
of upgrades, allowing them for every unit instead of just an arbitrarily-selected few. AH3M takes this
philosophy to its logical conclusion by ensuring that every unit upgrade is also special. Upgrades were
something of a mixed bag in the original game since there was no real standard for what you'd get aside
from more speed and HP. Here, every unit upgrade provides a new or improved ability along with more HP,
while for simplicity's sake, all other stats (attack, defense, speed, and damage) remain unchanged.

Many new unit abilities have been added in this mod, so let's kick this section off by listing them:

		 2x defense bonus when defending (Pikemen & Halberdiers)

		 First-strike retaliation when defending (Halberdiers)

		 +2 Morale/Luck aura (Paladins/Archdemons) & -2 Morale aura (Ghost Dragons)

		 2x "Jousting" bonus (Crusaders, i.e. upgraded Horsemen)

		 +25% damage bonus when retaliating (Battle Dwarves) or initiating (Gnoll Marauders)

		 Status resistance (Dwarves & Gnolls) & status resistance aura (Gold Dragons)

		 Can cast the Cure spell (Magic Unicorns)

		 Can repair damaged war machines (Gremlin Engineers)

		 Shot dispels positive statuses (Archmagi)

		 SP costs -(spell lv.) when unit is active (Familiar)

		 Pain Reflection (25%, now cumulative with the spell) (Noble Efreet)

		 Summons slain foes as Ghosts (Wraiths)

		 +25% damage if morale is higher than target's (Troglodyte Soldiers)

		 +3 attack until end of combat for every non-lethal attack (Minotaur Kings)

		 Mind/Magic-resistance aura (Mind/Magic Avatars)

		 Will not reduce morale in mixed teams (Peasants)

		 Can Enslave (AKA "Hypnotize") targets (Mummies)

		 3x Attack/Defense/Speed bonus on native terrain (Nomads)

Several of the above abilities are not entirely new, but are rather improvements or entire reworkings of
existing ones. The +2 Morale/Luck on Paladins and Archdemons, for example, is just the old "always has
positive morale/luck" bonus from Minotaurs and Halflings made less shitty and combined with the former
Unicorn resistance aura. The aura effect felt like a particularly underutilized mechanic in the original
game, and the addition of more here aims to add yet another layer of strategy to unit placement.

Negative statuses are of particular note since there's a much greater emphasis on them here. The natural
resistance ability, which previously included magic resistance since it was directly additive with the
Resistance skill, now applies just to negative statuses set by spells or enemy units. Nearly every unit
ability with random odds of occurring had a 20% chance to do so in the base game. Here, all statuses set
by units have a 30% base chance to proc, but can range anywhere from 10% to 50% depending on the number
of units in the attacking stack relative to the number of those defending - capping at either side being
outnumbered by at least 3 to 1. Some units such as upgraded flies now have the ability to inflict these
statuses with greater reliability and receive double the above odds - up to 100% - to do so.

As for the statuses themselves, the effects of disease are more potent, reducing attack and defense by a
greater amount and now also reducing the speed of your foe. Blind has been reworked from an immobilizing
status (since we already have two of those) into a damage output nerf more akin to how it traditionally
functions in most games. Poison, similarly, now deals damage over time instead of reducing maximum HP.
Further, all non-immobilizing statuses now have a much greater duration, thus requiring either a first
aid tent or the Cure spell to remove them in a timely manner. As for those that do, both paralyzed and
petrified units can now be attacked with impunity, though the latter is still the weaker of the two due
to the fact that all damage dealt to petrified units is reduced by 75% - up from just a 50% reduction in
vanilla that only applied to physical attacks and excluded spell damage.

On the subject of duration, a major change that will be more important when we get to spells is that all
statuses, both positive and negative, will now check to see if the target unit has moved this turn. This
is because the routine to remove most status effects is called at the beginning of each round of combat
rather than during individual stack turns, and thus you would effectively lose a turn of any status set
on a unit which had already moved. AH3M compensates in this case by adding an extra round of duration.

And then we have resistances and immunities, which have been overhauled in their entirety. As mentioned
earlier, spell immunity by level has been replaced with magic resistance (O-Magic), which both resists
magical status effects and reduces damage from spells as well as elemental shots fired by certain units.
This is effectively identical to the Resistance skill except that it only resists magical statuses and
not also physical statuses inflicted by enemy units. Immunity to physical statuses (O-Body) has been de-
coupled from the "unliving" property to exist as its own resistance on units such as Angels and Genies.
It also respects the paralyze and petrify statuses, which previously did not check for immunity at all.

Fire immunity was also mentioned earlier, as it no longer blocks status magic - friendly or otherwise.
The three elemental resistances/weaknesses (Fire, Water, and Shock) now only cover damage, be it magical
(spells and ranged attacks) or physical (melee). Spell coverage includes the Thunderbird proc, but not
Implosion, which deals air instead of shock damage. Armageddon is the other outlier, as it will still
deal half damage to fire-immune units rather than ignoring them completely. As for damage from units...

		       Fire: Fire/Energy & Magma Avatars + Gogs/Magogs (shots only)
		      Water: Water/Ice & Storm Avatars   + Zealots (shots only)
		      Shock: Storm & Energy Avatars      + Titans (shots only)

These units will deal 2x damage to targets weak to their element and halved damage to targets resistant
to it. The "halved damage on immunity" rule also applies to Mind and Magic Elementals versus units with
O-Mind or O-Magic, respectively, but they will not be able to hit a weakness against any unit. Finally,
the explosive effect of a Magog fireball will be completely ineffective against fire-resistant units.

	     Additionally to the above, some units also deal Air or Earth-elemental damage:

		  Air: Air Avatars         + Mages/Archmages & Enchanters (shots only)
		Earth: Earth/Magma Avatars + Liches/Power Liches & Beholders (shots only)

Although no units possess immunity or a weakness to these elements, their damage can be lowered by the
corresponding elemental resistance spell (with Air Resistance also covering Shock). For ranged elemental
attacks, this will be in lieu of the (Air) Shield spell, which is thus no longer a catch-all defense for
all ranged attacks. For the sake of both simplicity and game balance, only elemental avatars deal melee
elemental damage - making resistance spells a very effective defense against a Conflux opponent.

There are also several abilities that are unchanged from the base game and simply see more use here:

			 Flying (Imps/Familiars & Air/Storm Avatars)
			 No range penalty (Marksmen & Titans)
			 No wall (AKA "obstacle") penalty (Lizard Hunters)
			 Rebirth (Bonewalkers)
			 Retaliates twice (Boars & Emperor Basilisks)
			 Regeneration (Living Dead & Chaos Hydras)
			 Attack dispels positive statuses (Sprites)

On the flip-side to the above, there are a few abilities that felt a bit overused in the original game.
These were "no melee penalty", which showed up so much that it risked invalidating the general rule that
enemy shooters can be disabled by blocking them, and "no enemy retaliation", which just got tossed onto
units seemingly at random or when the developers couldn't think of anything else. An honorable mention
goes to "shoots/strikes twice", which always felt like a weird cop-out on Castle units meant to either
emulate the effects of morale (since actual morale bonuses were so ineffective in the original game) or
just to give generic beatstick abilities to the "tutorial" faction.

"No enemy retaliation" appears about as often in AH3M as in the original game, but almost entirely on
different units. Primarily, it's no longer a standard rider to the ability to strike multiple opponents
(Cerberi, Hydras, and Mind/Magic Avatars). This was never a necessary requirement on them to begin with:
when these units attack, only the "targeted" (i.e. the one that was clicked) enemy can retaliate. It's
also been removed from Devils, Nagas, and Vampire Lords, leaving Sprites as the only unit in AH3M with
this ability that originally possessed it. Joining them are Pixies, Monks/Zealots, Rogues, and Silver
Pegasi. The reasoning in most of these cases is to help protect a unit that's relatively fragile for its
level, though for Rogues it's meant to be sort of a stand-in for a "backstab" ability.

As for "no melee penalty", it ties in directly to a general reclassification of ranged units into three
categories: traditional archers, throwers, and magic shooters. The first category includes units with an
actual bow and arrow or other ranged weapon (i.e. the slings used by Halflings) who are universally not
able to fight at melee and also now have a more reasonable shot count that makes ammo carts useful, but
not necessarily required. The second group includes units who are primarily melee fighters, most of whom
only gain a ranged attack when upgraded and all of which have a very low shot count that necessitates an
ammo cart to sustainably fight at range. For obvious reasons, these units do not have melee penalties.

That just leaves the final group, which is units with non-physical (elemental) ranged attacks. This is
the largest group, consisting of about half of the game's ranged units, and also the least consistent so
far as the "no melee penalty" rule is concerned. Many units with elemental shots only gain them in their
upgraded forms and thus do not have a melee penalty. All of the rest do except for Gogs and Magogs, who
are otherwise treated as the "thrower" category above to justify the existence of Inferno's ammo cart.

				HAS MELEE PENALTY	NO MELEE PENALTY
				-----------------	----------------
				Archers/Marksmen	Zealots
				Elves/Grand Elves	Centaurians
				Mages/Archmages		Titans
				Liches/Power Liches	Gogs/Magogs
				Medusas/Emp.Medusas	Beholders
				Lizardmen/Liz.Hunters	Orc Warriors
				Halflings		Cyclopses/Brutes
				Sharpshooters		Storm Avatars
				Enchanters		Magma Avatars

In summary, as you can see above, every unit that has a ranged attack in its base form also has a melee
penalty except for Gogs and Cyclopses. Further, every unit with a melee penalty attacks with either an
actual ranged weapon or a magic staff, whereas units with no penalty look like they can actually fight.

Another change that affects all ranged units is the reduction of the distance limit for full damage from
10 hexes to 9. Seemingly minor at first glance, this edit crucially allows flying units - many of which
have a speed value of 9 - to close in from just out of range in a single turn. This keeps flying units
powerful against ranged units, since they are still mostly unable to cross the entire field in one turn.

Another universal change that actually is more minor in the grand scheme of things is that the "Defend"
command now boosts defense by 25% instead of 20%. If I'm being perfectly honest, this change was made
solely because it was easier to code when working in the new Pikemen/Halberdier ability rather than for
any actual balance concerns, but it does help make that ability a little more noticeable as a result.

With this mod's strict emphasis on new or improved abilities as the primary benefit for upgrading units,
it was perhaps inevitable that certain base units would lose theirs to compensate. Monks, Evil Eyes, and
Orcs, as seen above, are the most notable casualties of this policy. Others include Dendroids (the "bind
enemy in place" effect), Liches (the "death cloud" effect), and Bone Dragons (- enemy morale).

   On that note, let's have a quick look over the abilities that didn't make the cut and got trashed:

			 Immunity to "Jousting" bonus (Pikemen & Halberdiers)
			 +/- Army Luck/Morale (reworked into aura effects)
			 Magic Damper (Pegasi)
			 Magic Channel (Familiars)
			 Magic Drain (Wraiths)
			 Weakness (Dragonflies)
			 Curse (Mummies)
			 Spying (Rogues)
			 Sandwalker (Nomads)
			 Magic Mirror (Fairy Dragons)
			 Acid Breath (Rust Dragons)
			 Crystal Generation (Crystal Dragons)
			 Fear (Azure Dragons)
			 Hate (many units; this code is now elemental damage)

Perhaps unsurprisingly, about half of the above list is comprised of units added by the two expansions.
Although nowhere near as egregious as Conflux, these abilities were still half-baked at best and needed
to go. We haven't really had a chance to go over them yet since they're "neutral" units by means of not
being affiliated with any faction (not to be confused with Stronghold, Fortress, and/or Conflux units,
which are "neutral" in that they're neither good nor evil), so let's do that now.

The four neutral dragons are standard expansion pack content: way stronger than anything you'll see in
the base game and thus used sparingly. While tiered in the original game, they're all roughly equal in
power here. With their original abilities gone, they're defined more here by their resistances than by
their offensive capabilities (Fairy Dragons notwithstanding). Immunity to status effects are prevalent,
most notably with Crystal Dragons who are now classified as unliving. There's something of an elemental
theme here as well, again with Fairy Dragons as the outliers by resisting magic in general.

Fairy Dragons in specific are worth talking about due to their special behavior, namely their ability to
cast spells in combat. The massive damage potential makes them arguably the hardest of the four to take
down despite being the least durable. Their spells are cast at the expert level with magic power of four
times the number of Fairy Dragons in the stack (down from 5x in the original game), and it's that second
one in particular that gives them a real punch. Their spell list has also been slightly adjusted along
with that of the other unit that can cast more than one spell: Enchanters

			ENCHANTERS			FAIRY DRAGONS
			----------			-------------
			10%: Bless			20%: Harm
			10%: Weakness			20%: Ice Bolt
			15%: Fortune			15%: Fireball
			15%: Strength			15%: Lightning Bolt
			10%: Slow			10%: Ice Blast
			10%: Fate			10%: Firestorm
			15%: Haste			05%: Meteor Strike
			15%: Stoneskin			05%: Chain Lightning

As for the other spellcasting units, the main point of concern was avoiding them becoming redundant with
a hero capable of casting the same spells. Enchanters get away with it by virtue of casting their spells
at master level and having a wide pool from which they choose at random, so there's no real guarantee as
to what you'll get. Ogre Magi casting Strength (AKA "Bloodlust"), on the other hand, runs directly afoul
of this principle and have thus been switched to Flamestrike, a reworked version of the old Frenzy spell
that only affects a single target regardless of skill level. Master Genies follow suit with their former
random spellcast being changed to another new spell that is basically a reworked version of Teleport.

As for the other unaffiliated units, Peasants have been made marginally less shitty by gaining a little
more HP (3 instead of 1), an actual damage range (1-2 instead of a flat 1), and the ability to integrate
into any team without causing a morale penalty for mixing units - as other neutral units will still do.
Rogues gain the ability to attack without retaliation instead of their old "Spying" ability, and Mummies
receive a substantially more devastating ability to inflict Enslave (AKA Hypnotize) on their targets in
place of Curse. Trolls and Enchanters have both been kicked down a level to more closely match their
abilities while Diamond Golems received a substantial buff to better qualify them as sixth-level units.

And then we have Nomads, which brings us to the topic of native terrain. Units fighting on their native
terrain receive a bonus to their attack, defense, and speed. Further, your hero will ignore any movement
penalties on that terrain if your entire army is native to it. In the original game, Nomads allowed your
army to ignore movement penalties on sand regardless of composition. Here, they are simply native to it
(with the special ability of receiving a larger native terrain combat bonus than normal). This retains
their original ability... provided that the rest of your army is also native to sand.

	-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In the original game, three factions treated grassland as native terrain (Castle, Rampart, and Conflux)
and none were native to sand - a rather notable disadvantage for our revised Nomad units above. In AH3M,
both Rampart and Conflux have new native terrain for a better overall spread:

                o------------o-----------o  o------------o-------o  o----------o--------o
                | CASTLE     | Grass     |  | RAMPART    | Dirt  |  | TOWER    | Snow   |
                o------------o-----------o  o------------o-------o  o----------o--------o
                | INFERNO    | Volcano   |  | NECROPOLIS | Dirt  |  | DUNGEON  | Cavern |
                o------------o-----------o  o------------o-------o  o----------o--------o
                | STRONGHOLD | Wasteland |  | FORTRESS   | Swamp |  | CONFLUX  | Sand   |
                o------------o-----------o  o------------o-------o  o----------o--------o

The majority of unaffiliated units do not have native terrain. Aside from the aforementioned Nomads, the
only other exceptions are Trolls (native to Swamp) and Gold/Diamond Golems, who are now treated as Tower
units despite Tower towns not actually being able to produce them. Mummies also qualify by virtue of all
undead units now treating Cursed Ground (a special terrain overlay) as native terrain.

AH3M also corrects a poor design choice from the original game that forced the subterranean ("cavern")
background on any battle taking place in the underground layer, regardless of the underlying terrain.
This is more than just an aesthetic fix since it also affects the aforementioned stat bonuses. Depending
on the map, this change is either a nerf for Dungeon and/or a buff for any other faction.

	-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Growth events on week/month rollovers have also been changed. The odds of a growth week have doubled to
50% and the chances of "silent" (non-growth) and plague months have been removed, leaving every month as
a growth month. The bonuses themselves have been changed, as well, from a static +5 for growth weeks to
double (base) growth and double the existing population for growth months to triple growth. There is no
longer a separation between base and upgraded units; bonuses will now apply to both. AH3M also fixes a
bug in HD mod wherein a week bonus would overwrite a month bonus: the effect of the "month" unit popping
up all over the map would still occur, but the growth bonus would be a weekly one for a different unit.

Finally, growth weeks can now be for any affiliated unit EXCEPT for Conflux units. By contrast, the list
of candidates for growth months has been pared down from twelve in the original game to just four: Fire,
Water, Earth, or Air Avatars, all which are now level 3 units. This is high enough for them to be a good
source of experience, yet low enough that it shouldn't be an issue when they invariably end up blocking
off a major thoroughfare. That they're unliving units averts the classic all-you-can-Necromance buffet
(as mentioned earlier), and it's also a notable buff to Conflux heroes with Diplomacy.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------




				    5. MAGIC (SPELL CHANGES)




---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We've already touched on some major changes to the spell system earlier on in the skills section: spells
are now purchased individually from mage guilds instead of learned automatically when your hero enters a
town with one and level 3-5 spells now require the associated elemental skill to cast rather than Wisdom
acting as a universal gate. Might heroes now come with empty spellbooks and are thus no longer required
to purchase one; a change that also prevents the mage guild from being unviewable behind said cash gate.
Accompanying these changes is an entirely redesigned spellbook interface which has a designated position
for each spell rather than a condensed list, making it easier to tell at a glance which spells you have
or which ones you're missing. There is also no longer a separate interface for adventure spells or an
"all spells" tab since every spell of each element fits neatly into its own designated page.

One my biggest issues with spells in the original game was their imbalanced distribution throughout both
the four elements and five levels, with many ending up in places where they clearly didn't belong. Each
element now provides the same number of spells per level: four first-level spells, three spells for the
second and third levels, and two fourth and fifth-level spells. Further, all spell point costs are now
static, with elemental skill expertise now always directly benefiting the effects of the spell itself.

      o-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------o
      | LEVEL 1   AIR                 EARTH               FIRE                WATER               |
      o-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------o
      | (1 SP)    Wizard Eye          Repair              Torchlight          Cure                |
      | (2 SP)    Sunray              Harm                Curse               Bless               |
      | (3 SP)    Air Resistance      Earth Resistance    Fire Resistance     Water Resistance    |
      | (4 SP)    Haste               Slow                Fire Wall           Ice Bolt            |
      o-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------o
      | LEVEL 2   AIR                 EARTH               FIRE                WATER               |
      o-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------o
      | (6 SP)    Fate                Stoneskin           Strength            Weakness            |
      | (8 SP)    Shield              Fear                Fireball            Heroism             |
      | (10 SP)   Lightning Bolt      Reanimate           Fortune             Purify              |
      o-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------o
      | LEVEL 3   AIR                 EARTH               FIRE                WATER               |
      o-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------o
      | (12 SP)   Dispel              Toxic Cloud         Pain Reflection     Clone               |
      | (16 SP)   Zoom                Quicksand           Flamestrike         Ice Blast           |
      | (20 SP)   Counterstrike       Recall              Firestorm           Water Walk          |
      o-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------o
      | LEVEL 4   AIR                 EARTH               FIRE                WATER               |
      o-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------o
      | (25 SP)   Chain Lightning     Anti-Magic          Sacrifice           Enslave             |
      | (30 SP)   Fly                 Meteor Shower       Berserk             Town Portal         |
      o-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------o
      | LEVEL 5   AIR                 EARTH               FIRE                WATER               |
      o-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------o
      | (35 SP)   Summon Air          Summon Earth        Summon Fire         Summon Water        |
      | (40 SP)   Implosion           Resurrection        Armageddon          Warp                |
      o-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------o

		      As you can see, many spells have been renamed/reworked here:

		(View Air) -------> Wizard Eye     (Magic Arrow) -----> Harm
		(Disrupting Ray) -> Sunray         (Precision) -------> Fate
		(Air Shield) -----> Shield         (Fire Shield) -----> Pain Reflection
		(Bloodlust) ------> Strength       (Frenzy) ----------> Flamestrike
		(Sorrow) ---------> Fear           (Mirth) -----------> Heroism
		(Animate Dead) ---> Reanimate      (Destroy Undead)---> Purify
		(Death Ripple) ---> Toxic Cloud    (Hypnotize) -------> Enslave
		(Frost Ring) -----> Ice Blast      (Inferno) ---------> Firestorm
		(Teleport) -------> Zoom           (Dimension Door)---> Warp


	(Torchlight, Repair, Recall are entirely new spells; they will be discussed further below)

Refer to the Printme file included with this download for a full breakdown of the probabilities of every
spell appearing in each town. Spell probabilities use the same naming schema/display format as the hero
skill probability table, and the values shown correspond with the odds below:

					(M)ajor     83.3%
					(C+)ommon   66.6%
					(C)ommon    50%
					(U)ncommon  25%
					(R)are      10%

Before we move on, let's talk a little more about each element and the general roles they fill.

Fire is the most offensive element by far, with most of its spells being offensive, either directly or
indirectly, or a buff to damage output. The only real exceptions are the requisite resistance spell and
an evil version of Resurrection that requires a ritual sacrifice (which, to be fair, is very offensive).
Fire is thus the element most strongly aligned with the evil factions as opposed to the "good" ones.

Air is also an offensive element, second only to fire in terms of total destructive output and actually
winning out in terms of single-target damage. It's also the most common overall, with only Fortress and
Necropolis not favoring it to a significant degree. Air has more variety than fire magic does, including
a large focus on speed and travel, and even provides one of the most important defense spells in Shield.

Water is a more defensive element focused on control and manipulation; this now includes the Town Portal
and Warp (AKA "Dimension Door") spells, making water the most important school for adventure map magic.
Water is also home to several notable support spells, namely Bless and Cure. Directly offensive spells
are present, but are generally weaker and/or more situational than those from the fire and air schools.
In contrast to fire, water is the most "good"-aligned of the four elements.

Earth, finally, is the most defensive of all elements. Like air magic, there's a focus on speed, except
it's about slowing down your foes instead of hastening your allies. Aside from that, it looks to either
directly defend your units or bring them back from the dead, which comes in both zombie and non-zombie
flavors. As with water magic, the offensive spells here tend to take a backseat to fire and air in most
cases. Although several earth spells are common finds in most mage guilds, it's the least common element
overall outside of the three factions (Rampart, Necropolis, and Fortress) that strongly favor it.

	-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As mentioned earlier, one of the biggest overarching changes that AH3M makes to magic is that elemental
magic skills do not benefit first-level spells beyond basic level or second-level spells beyond expert.
Because of this, spells with a "mass effect" threshold, all of which appear in the first two levels, can
now do so at basic level rather than master. Of particular note is that heroes with a specialty in such
spells are thus now able to mass-cast them right away.

Something that was brought up earlier was the general concept that might heroes tend to prefer support
spells instead of directly offensive ones since their magnitudes are fixed and therefore unaffected by a
lower magic stat. Several spells actually don't consider the caster's magic at all and are therefore of
particular interest to might heroes: Dispel, Quicksand, Berserk, and all adventure map spells. Another
earlier-mentioned fact of note is that all statuses now check if the target unit has moved yet this turn
so as to avoid losing a turn of duration to the start-of-round status purge.

An oft-overlooked property of spells is that most of them can be cast on war machines where appropriate.
The spell descriptions have been updated to make it more clear which ones will and won't, but the only
ones to have been changed in this regard are Stoneskin (no longer effective), Pain Reflection (also no
longer effective), and Implosion (now effective, although most likely a tremendous waste of SP).

Finally, we'll wrap this section up with some further notes on individual spells:

	--------------------
	Wizard Eye & Visions
	--------------------

Wizard Eye combines the effects of View Air and Earth sans the effect of View Earth revealing the entire
map at master level and the View Air bonus of showing all towns. It also now reveals treasure chests in
addition to just loose resources and artifacts. It is planned for a future update to also display other
points of interest such as Mr. Bones or Wagons, but as of now the "point of interest" icon is unused.

The effects of Wizard Eye will now also persist until the end of your turn (just click on the "View Map"
button or press V) instead of being a one-time deal. Should you happen to forget this and cast it again
needlessly, it will not cost any SP (as was already the case with the Water Walk/Fly spells).

Visions, the original game's other information spell, is now an exclusive effect of Thieves' Dens.

	----------
	Torchlight
	----------

A familiar spell to players of the mainline games, Torchlight increases a hero's viewable radius on the
adventure map until the end of turn - as well as providing fire magic with its one and only non-combat
spell. As with Wizard Eye, should you cast this spell redundantly, it will not subtract from your SP.

	------
	Repair
	------

One of the new spells and a common find in most mage guilds, Repair seeks to help keep war machines more
relevant in most battles by allowing you to repair damage dealt to them and, with Earth Magic, fix them
once they are broken. This is thus the only spell in the game that is usable both in and out of combat.

	-------------
	Cure & Dispel
	-------------

Cure is generally more useful here due to the increased prevalence of physical status effects while the
substantially reduced casting cost makes it a handy staple in any spellbook. The downsides are that it
now only restores health without Water Magic and can no longer be mass cast.

Dispel, on the other hand, is now more expensive and a total battlefield wipe of all magical - but not
physical - statuses by default. The benefits of further Air Magic skill is selective removal of statuses
you want gone while leaving the ones you want, starting with buffs on friendly units at expert level and
then negative statuses on enemy units as master. Also, Dispel is an air spell now instead of water.

	-------------
	Bless & Curse
	-------------

Because these spells originally eliminated rather than merely reducing a unit's damage range, they ended
up having a stronger impact than higher-level spells which directly affect attack power. Both now halve
the total damage range of a unit stack instead of eliminating it. The exception is for Bless and Curse
specialists, who cast these spells to their full original effect.

	-------------------------
	Shield & Resist (Element)
	-------------------------

Somewhat confusingly, the Shield spell in AH3M is what was called Air Shield in the original game; the
original Shield spell has been removed. This is true to the mainline series, wherein the Shield spell
greatly reduced the damage dealt by projectiles and no equivalent existed for melee damage. Aside from
being redundant with Stoneskin, it's unnecessary from a balance standpoint to have a major protection
spell for melee attacks to mirror the one for ranged attacks.

However, as discussed earlier with the Resistance skill and again with units, the reclassification of
ranged unit attacks into physical and magical projectiles means that Shield is only effective on roughly
half of the game's ranged attackers. In addition to protecting against the other half of ranged units,
the elemental resistance spells also defend against melee damage from elemental avatars, as seen below.

					 PHYSICAL RANGED ATTACKS
				-----------------------------------------
				Archers/Marksmen           Elite Centaurs
				Elves/Grand Elves          Sharpshooters
				Medusas/Empress Medusas    Orc Warriors
				Cyclopses/Cyclops Brutes   Halflings
				Lizardmen/Lizard Hunters   Ballistas

       RESIST   MELEE ATTACKS                 RANGED ATTACKS
       ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
       Air      Air/*Storm/*Energy Avatars    Mages/Archmages, Enchanters, Titans, *Storm Avatars
       Earth    Earth/*Magma/*Ice Avatars     Liches/Power Liches, Beholders, *Magma Avatars
       Fire     Fire/*Energy/*Magma Avatars   Gogs/Magogs, *Magma Avatars
       Water    Water/*Ice/*Storm Avatars     Zealots, *Storm Avatars

	 *(The magnitude of each resistance is halved vs. attacks from dual-elemental Avatars)

Turrets ("Arrow Towers" in the original game) are an exception. Although treated as their own unit type
for most purposes, their damage type will match that of the units which man them. Ergo, Tower, Inferno,
Necropolis, and Conflux turrets will deal Air, Fire, Earth, and Water/Shock damage respectively, whereas
all other towns will deal physical damage with their turrets. This rule applies to damage from defensive
barricades, as well: moats (Castle/Conflux) deal Water damage, boiling tar (Dungeon/Fortress) is Earth
damage, and lava/land mines (Inferno/Tower) are both fire damage.

	----------
	Anti-Magic
	----------

One of the few spells in the original game to carry a noticeable drawback - that being that your units
could not be targeted by friendly spells - Anti-Magic was given the same treatment as immunity to spells
by level by turning it into magical resistance. In fact, it now literally grants the O-Magic property to
a unit stack, with master Earth Magic increasing the magnitude from 50% resistance to 75%. For the sake
of my sanity (and because math is hard), Anti-Magic cannot be used on units with inherent O-Magic.

	---------------------------
	Counterstrike & Flamestrike
	---------------------------

A rather maligned spell in the original game, Counterstrike now doubles the damage dealt by retaliations
rather than allowing them ad infinitum. As a tradeoff, it will add one additional retaliation for expert
and master Air Magic instead of becoming a mass target spell. This is keeping with its contemporaries,
all powerful single-target spells as opposed to weaker ones that affect entire armies.

Flamestrike, formerly Frenzy, is in the exact same boat. Originally a spell with too many drawbacks and
nowhere near enough benefit to be useful, Flamestrike now directly adds fire damage (thus subject to any
resistances or weaknesses thereof) to a unit's attack. This bonus ranges from an additional 50% at basic
to effectively double damage with master Fire Magic, and as with the new Counterstrike effect above it's
far more effective to add directly to a unit's damage output instead of it's attack stat as the Frenzy
spell did before. Also unlike Frenzy, Flamestrike no longer reduces the target's defense to zero, is no
longer classified as a mind spell (and thus subject to immunity), and is no longer capped to one turn.

	----------------
	Zoom & Quicksand
	----------------

Zoom is effectively the Teleport spell reworked into a form in which it can actually be used by the AI.
Rather than moving a unit to any location, it now increases their speed and grants them flying so that
they can just do it themselves. The caster's magic power is what gets added to the unit's speed, making
it no longer a stat-agnostic spell that does require at least some skill to jet a unit completely across
enemy lines, while expert and master Air Magic increase the duration from one turn to two and three.

Quicksand, one of the original game's oddball spells with seemingly no relation to the above, has been
re-envisioned as its counterpart. While Zoom is effectively a stronger, single-target version of Haste,
Quicksand is now a stronger, focused version of Slow. The Blind spell filled this role in the original
game by completely incapacitating unit stacks for a standard duration (i.e. equal to the magic power of
its caster), and the end result was completely broken. Here, Quicksand behaves similarly to the Dendroid
"bind" ability, locking a unit stack in place but not preventing them from attacking. Duration is hard-
capped to two turns to keep it from being overpowered, while skill level increases the effect radius.

	--------------------
	Purify & Toxic Cloud
	--------------------

Toxic Cloud no longer affects unliving units, i.e. Golems, Gargoyles, and elemental avatars, but is now
otherwise 100% accurate. Initially a pure damage spell at basic level, it now also has a 10% chance to
poison every living unit stack at expert level. Master Earth Magic doubles these odds to 20%.

Purify, on the other hand, is quite different. While Toxic Cloud made sense as a battlefield nuke since
it was all-purpose use for a specialized faction, the inverse seems to demand a powerful single-target
spell to be interesting/useful. Purify is now quite unique among damage spells in that acts as instant
death to a set percentage of units in an enemy stack, on top of which additional damage is dealt - thus
allowing sufficiently-skilled casters to completely destroy a stack.

	---------
	Sacrifice
	---------

Sacrifice is one of those spells in the original game that might have seen more use had its impact been
made more clear to the player. What it does is erase a friendly stack from existence (i.e. it can not be
Resurrected later) in order to revive units in another stack. The amount to revive is based on the total
health of the sacrificed stack, and it does add the caster's magic power and Fire Magic skill to that
amount so as not to be a complete dumpster fire of a spell, but the formula was so confusing that most
players didn't bother. It also didn't help that Sacrifice was a spell largely exclusive to a complete
dumpster fire of a faction, which brings us to a kind of a really important point.

Sacrifice is dismissed as a shitty version of Resurrection because it is. It has a massive drawback of
its own despite also being bound by those of Resurrection, namely that it can't revive units which are
unliving. This is really odd since, although primarily an Inferno spell, Sacrifice also had a chance to
appear in Necropolis: a town which has absolutely no use for it. To this end, Sacrifice can now revive
any unit with no restrictions except that, true to Necropolis's theme, the sacrifice must be living.

Furthermore, the formula for how many units to revive has been revised, making it both more clear to the
player as well as a great deal more powerful. At expert Fire Magic (required to cast Sacrifice), it adds
the caster's magic power to the number of units sacrificed. Thus, casting expert Sacrifice on a stack of
10 Archangels (300 HP each) with 10 magic power will revive 20 Archangels' worth of HP (6,000) in the
target stack. At master level, twice the magic power will be added, thus bringing our total to 9,000.

	----------------
	Summon (Element)
	----------------

As these spells are often seen as the "dud" rolls of a fifth-level mage guild, their effectiveness has
been increased substantially, to the tune of five times the caster's magic power at master level. Less
interestingly, summoning more than one type of element in the same battle is no longer disallowed.

	----------------
	Water Walk & Fly
	----------------

Both of these spells allow crossing of normally-impassable terrain with the supposed restriction of only
being able to expend a certain percentage of your maximum movement points doing so. I say "supposedly"
because I strongly suspect after looking at this game's code that said restriction never really worked
correctly, if at all. In any case, both have been reworked here to instead simply make crossing said
impassable tiles cost more movement points than usual (as rough terrain) and then lowering that penalty
with further spell expertise, down to a minimum of base cost for Water Walk and 1.5x base for Fly. This
means that Water Walk remains preferable to Fly when the impassable terrain in question is water.

Speaking of movement penalties, a lesser-known benefit of the Fly skill in the original game was that it
also totally eliminated movement penalties for rough terrain as the Pathfinding skill at master level.
While this does actually sort of make sense, it is not good to have a spell that makes an entire skill
redundant. Thus, my compromise here was to make Fly halve all rough terrain penalties instead.

	---------------------------
	Recall, Town Portal, & Warp
	---------------------------

Easily the closest thing in the game to a "must-have" spell, much of AH3M's mechanical and map design is
focused on making it so that the game isn't essentially decided by whether or not your Mage Guild rolls
Town Portal. This includes placing Town Portal scrolls as high-level treasures in many maps, as well as
including the "Lucid Pools" elemental terrain in key locations that allows heroes who know the spell but
lack Water Magic to make use of it. But easily the most obvious of these attempts is the conversion of
what Heroes veterans refer to as "poor man's Town Portal" into an actual spell.

Formerly home to Town Portal proper, Earth Magic now presents us with the Recall spell. What it does is
return the selected hero to the tavern pool so that they may be rehired elsewhere. This is effectively
identical to surrendering in combat since it will preserve the hero's army and an objective improvement
over retreating (the aforementioned "poor man's Town Portal"). Where the hero can be rehired depends on
the skill level of the spell. Initially, the hero may only be re-hired at your capitol town. At expert
level - the same skill of Water Magic needed to cast Town Portal - the two spells are nearly identical
since you can rehire the hero at any town. Finally, at master Earth Magic, the hero may also be rehired
at any external tavern on the map, giving Recall a distinct identity from the spell it mimics.

    (Given the similarity between the two spells, the AI will treat Recall as if it were Town Portal)

It was discussed earlier how the handling of heroes in taverns has been updated in this mod, namely in
that escaped heroes occupy an entirely separate slot that will temporarily replace but not overwrite the
hero in the right slot. Recalled heroes function identically, occupying another temporary slot in memory
that will temporarily but not completely replace the hero in the left slot, meaning that you can have
both an escaped hero and a recalled hero at any given time. As with escaped heroes, recalled heroes will
remain in their temporary slot until rehired. You may not cast Recall again, however, until you do.

Aside from costing more SP, however, Town Portal remains the superior spell in most scenarios. The most
obvious reason is, of course, the fact that you don't have to spend 2,500 gold to rehire your hero every
time you cast it. The other, less obvious reason is that Recall will effectively end the casting hero's
turn: they will have no movement left if rehired on the same turn. Town Portal, on the other hand, now
costs a set percentage of the caster's maximum movement (as opposed to none at all in the original game)
in a bid to make it at least a little less busted. This percentage is 50% at expert and 25% at master.

Dimension Door, finally, has undergone a complete transformation into a much different spell than it was
before - hence the name change to Warp. Despite being largely considered to be one of the most powerful
spells in the original game, which it was, at the end of the day it was really just a slightly stronger
version of Fly: it let you move anywhere you wanted within a certain radius with no regard for whatever
happened to be in your way. Here, however, it has a more unique function.

Warp may be cast once to set a marker and then again at any time to either replace it with a new one or,
more helpfully, return to the old one provided that the tile is not currently occupied by another hero.
This concept will probably seem familiar to players of the mainline series because it's the top-level
water spell in Might & Magic 6-8 and is called Lloyd's Beacon. It is of great use due to allowing you to
fast travel to places that Town Portal can't take you and (almost) manages to avoid being completely
overpowered because it can only take you to places that you've already been.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------




				    6. ARTIFACTS & OTHER CHANGES




---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The most notable aspect separating Heroes III from its predecessors so far as artifacts are concerned is
the implementation of equipment slots. This makes sense: loading your heroes up with fifteen swords like
Fighter from 8-bit Theater is fun, but kind of stupid and extremely overpowered. This system does have
its drawbacks, however - standardizing each stat bonus to one equipment type (i.e. attack on weapons,
defense on shields) limited the diversity and created a weird scenario where neither helmets nor armor
raised defense. The bonuses here are a bit more spread out, so instead of having, say, two swords on the
same tier that raise attack by different amounts (thus making one objectively better), one will boost
both attack and spell power while the other will have a higher bonus, but only to attack.

That said, one thing in particular that I still love about the original Heroes of Might & Magic moreso
than any of its successors is the way that it handled artifacts. There wasn't much variety: they either
boosted a core stat or luck/morale. Simple, yes, but this meant that every artifact you found was a nice
thing and not a piece of trash which made you immune to a spell that you'd never have used against you
or boosted a skill you didn't have (or, for that matter, want). To this end, many of the less desirable
artifacts have been thrown in the trash or reworked into something better.

Starting with the trashpile, we have the two Scouting artifacts ("Speculum" was a very unfortunate name)
along with the long list of artifacts that blocked specific spells. We also have those with effects that
only occurred at the start of a hero's turn (i.e. there was no reason to keep them equipped otherwise),
which includes the movement-point boosters, the mana restoration artifacts, and the resource-generating
artifacts. The Statue of Legend (formerly "Legion") components are still here, but now provide a damage
bonus to units of a certain level rather than a growth bonus.

As mentioned earlier, spell scrolls are more commonplace in AH3M due to being sold at spell shrines as
well as in Tower towns. I mention it here specifically to note that they do a lot to give you something
to stick in your five miscellaneous artifact slots. There weren't really a whole lot of miscellaneous
artifacts in the game to begin with, and a good deal of them ended up in the above-mentioned shitcan.

Next, we have the skill-boosting artifacts, which are only partly garbage because three of them boost a
skill that's only used by one faction and another three boost a skill that nobody wants. Addressing the
Eagle Eye artifacts was a simple matter of converting them into a new set of Learning-boosters, but this
still left the bigger issue of them all requiring the skill to not be useless except for the Resistance
artifacts, since their boost was treated as a passive bonus. While that remains true here, they now all
also boost one of the four core attributes as consolation should you happen to lack the skill.

Due to the earlier-mentioned changes to the formulas for luck and morale, there's now a wider variety of
artifacts which boost them. The Badge of Courage, which in the original game also defended against mind
spells, is now just a morale booster like the others of its ilk. The Glyph of Gallantry and Ladybird of
Luck have both been removed, leaving only a bonus of +2 luck and/or morale from treasure-level artifacts
alone (bearing in mind that the effects of duplicate artifacts do not stack).

On a related note, the "Artifact" starting bonus will no longer provide morale boosters to Necropolis or
or Conflux nor the Ass of Legend to the latter seeing as it does not actually have a second-level unit.
The Vampire's Cowl or Amulet of Wisdom, respectively, will be given in place of these artifacts in the
event that they're rolled. It also won't give the Vampire's Cowl to any faction other than Necropolis,
instead opting for the Clover of Fortune if it gets rolled for them. See also the miscellaneous changes
near the bottom of this file for edits to the other two starting bonuses.

And then we have the combination artifacts, most of which have been changed drastically. Their focus is
now primarily on their unique benefits rather than ludicrous stat boosts (looking at you, Holy Alliance
and Dragonlord Armor). We'll go over each one and what's new with them below:

	--------------
	Elixir of Life
	--------------

Since they provided a minor, static bonus to health in the original game, the Elixir of Life components
were effectively useless on anything except first-level units; only the percentage-based bonus conveyed
by the assembled combo had any significant effect on higher-level ones. Here, the component effects are
percentage-based, as well; the Elixir itself now adds only the regeneration effect.

	-------------------------------------
	Everstrike (AKA "Sharpshooter's Bow")
	-------------------------------------

The primary effect of "ranged attacks are unblockable by adjacent enemy units" (similar in effect to but
effectively distinct from "no melee penalty") has been removed, leaving it functionally identical to the
Golden Bow (which has been removed from the game). This is strangely fitting given that Sharpshooters do
possess both of the remaining abilities (ignoring range and wall penalties), but not the third.

	----------
	Soulbinder
	----------

The resistance-boosting artifacts now combine to provide total immunity to physical and mental statuses.
This covers everything except non-mental magical statuses: Curse, Slow, Weakness, Sunray, and Quicksand.
Note that Resistance itself still can block these statuses in addition to reducing magical damage taken.

	-----------
	Timespinner
	-----------

Ostensibly a brand new artifact, this is technically just the Ring of the Magi with a slightly different
list of components and a completely different effect. Rather than increasing spell duration, these are
the new Learning skill artifacts with their resulting assembly reducing the wearer's SP costs by 25%.

	-----------
	Lichcrafter
	-----------

The "Cloak of the Balanced King", as Sseth Tzeentach once called it, now only raises 5th-level units and
higher as Liches while raising Zombies as normal from lower-tier enemies. As with Zombies, it does so at
a 1:1 ratio with your skill, i.e. 50% Necromancy will raise 50% of eligible enemy units as Liches.

	----------------
	Statue of Legend
	----------------

As mentioned above, the statue component artifacts have been changed from growth to damage bonuses for
units of a specific level. The feet and ass, both treasure-level artifacts, handle levels one and two,
the legs and body (minor artifacts) cover levels three and four, and the head, a major artifact, boosts
both levels five and six. The seventh-level booster, then, is the assembled statue.

	------------------
	Armageddon's Blade
	------------------

Perhaps most notable in that it's now able to be assembled at all outside of its campaign, but with that
comes a change to its effect which was overpowered even within the context of said campaign. Rather than
allowing its user to cast Armageddon with impunity, it now itself casts Armageddon on the opposing team
(while ignoring your own) at the start of every round of combat. Any further Armageddon castings by its
wielder will behave normally, plus it won't actually teach you the spell anymore.

	-------------
	Holy Alliance
	-------------

The most overpowered combo in the original game at first glance if not in actuality (Armageddon's Blade
and the Statue of Legion are both strong competitors), the Holy Alliance drops from a ridiculous +21 to
all stats to a more reasonable +13 to Attack and Defense and +16 to Knowledge (a gain of +8 Attack over
its components) bolstered by a +2 bonus to morale. It no longer casts any spells at the beginning of
combat and now only allows mixing of good-aligned units instead of including Stronghold and Fortress.

	----------------
	Dragonlord Armor
	----------------

Essentially a less overpowered version of the Holy Alliance in the original game despite being more of a
pain in the ass to assemble, the Dragonlord Armor is instead reimagined here as its magical counterpart.
It increases Defense and Magic by 16 (a +8 Defense gain over its components), but only raises Attack and
Knowledge by 6. It's new unique effect is reducing all magical damage taken by 25%, cumulative with the
O-Magic ability. Finally, it's much easier to assemble now with three components removed (the tabard and
both rings), thus tying it with the Holy Alliance at six each.

	---------------
	Titan's Thunder
	---------------

The unique benefit of this combo is now O-Shock. The primary benefit is the substantial stat gain over
its components, converting the penalties to bonuses for a total gain of 16 points across all four stats.
Seeing as this is the only combination artifact comprised entirely of relic-level components, plus the
fact that retardedly high stats are sort of the theme of said components, I felt okay leaving this as a
massive stat booster. It also doesn't teach you that weird Thunder spell like it did before.

		    (All other combination artifacts have been removed from the game)

	-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

War machines were discussed earlier with the First Aid and Ballistics skills with the exception of Ammo
Carts, which have no governing skill. In the original game, Ammo Carts had a passive effect of units not
using any shots if one was present. Here, it is an active unit which functions very much like the First
Aid Tent, replenishing up to 2 shots to any ranged unit stack each turn.

That aside, I mention war machines here because they're technically considered to be artifacts that are
also units, and so they are an effective way to transition from talking about artifacts to talking about
town buildings by discussing their availability at town blacksmiths:

    o------------o-----------------o  o------------o----------------o  o-----------o-----------------o
    | CASTLE     | First Aid Tent  |  | RAMPART    | Ammo Cart      |  | TOWER     | Ballista        |
    | INFERNO    | Ammo Cart       |  | NECROPOLIS | Ballista       |  | DUNGEON   | First Aid Tent  |
    | STRONGHOLD | Cart + Ballista |  | FORTRESS   | First Aid Tent |  | CONFLUX   |*(Catapult only) |
    o------------o-----------------o  o------------o----------------o  o-----------o-----------------o

        (*Further, all town Blacksmiths also sell Catapults instead of every hero coming with one)

Regardless of what each Blacksmith sells, however, they will all repair any broken war machine in the
inventory of any hero who ends their turn in a town with one free of charge, similar to how towns with
Mage Guilds will refill their spell points. External Blacksmiths on the adventure map will provide the
free repair service instantaneously (no need to end your turn there) as well as selling all three of the
non-Catapult war machines, but they will charge more than an in-town one would (+500 gold and 2 wood).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

					TOWN BUILDINGS
					--------------

Before getting into anything else, a note of particular interest to newer players who haven't memorized
the location of the town hall for every town type is that the town hall button in the bottom left of the
town interface screen is now a shortcut to the build menu (which normally requires clicking on the town
hall itself to access). Right next to it is the fort button, which HD mod turns into a "recruit from all
dwellings" shortcut. This shortcut has been moved to the now-unused 8th dwelling slot; the fort button
now opens up the town defense/unit comparison screen as clicking on the fort itself would (and would not
be possible in a town with no fort built). Additionally, the "split stack" button now initiates a trade
between visiting and garrisoned heroes if a hero is selected instead of a unit stack: something which
previously required moving the visiting hero out of town and initiating the trade on the adventure map.

The costs and build-order requirements of town buildings have been edited across the board, but there's
only a few such changes of particular note. Most importantly, the Capitol - which players will generally
prioritize building before anything else - now only requires the City Hall instead of also requiring the
fully-upgraded Fort. By extension, Citadels and Bastions (the latter renamed here from "Castle" since we
already have a faction called that), now require substantially larger investments than before.

As with the original game, barricades (renamed here from moats since only Castle and Conflux have those)
deal varying damage depending on town type. In AH3M, turrets (renamed from Arrow Tower) now do the same.
Turret damage now scales with attack (+4 damage per point if a defending hero is present) rather than on
the number of buildings in the town, and like in the original game ignores the target's defense. Damage
can be reduced only by the Armorer skill and/or Shield spell for turrets which fire physical projectiles
(Castle/Rampart/Dungeon/Stronghold/Fortress) or the appropriate elemental resistance skill/spell/ability
spell otherwise. Many barricades also deal elemental damage, as well, which can be mitigated similarly.
Note that resistance to barricade damage will negate it entirely rather than just halving it.

The durability of walls and turrets now varies not only on the type of town, but also the individual
section. Specific values can be found in the Printme, but of particular note is that drawbridges are now
substantially more difficult to break down than walls. The reason for this is quite simple: barricades
would have little value if it was just as easy to knock down the gate and thus avoid them altogether.

The other significant change in regard to build-order requirements is that most of the unique buildings
are now required by certain dwellings, such as Necropolis's Shroud of Night now being required by the
Vampire dwelling or the upgraded Mage Tower now needing the Magic Library. The end result of both this
and the above changes is that the trunk of each town's build tree has what was previously dead-end twigs
woven into it while fortifications now exist as an independent branch of it rather than its foundation.

Aside from that, the costs of unit dwellings are now more standardized. This mostly affects the notable
outliers from the original game: Angel/Archangel, Titan, and Cyclops dwellings. As discussed before, the
four elemental Conflux dwellings are now completely even in cost, the only difference being the required
resources for the upgrade, while the Pyre now requires a mix of all four. Other notable dwelling changes
include Castle's third-level dwelling no longer requiring its fourth-level, Necropolis's horde building
raising Zombie growth instead of Skeletons, and Conflux getting a second horde building for Mind/Magic
Avatars. All horde buildings now also require the upgraded dwellings to be built first, a decision that
was made not so much for balance reasons but rather technical limitations with other changes.

	(Also, the 2nd-level dwelling no longer has a chance to be built initially)

Taverns now give new (and much better) advice than before which updates daily instead of weekly. In the
original game, they had roughly equal chances of a random stock rumor, a rumor from the map itself, or a
hint about the location of the grail, defaulting to stock rumors if the map had no rumors and/or grail.
Later in the game, they could also start parroting information from your Thieves' Guild, such as which
player has the strongest army. It will now always use the map rumors if present, else it will always use
the stock rumors; Grail hints are no longer necessary as we'll get into just below.

Another lesser known effect of Taverns is that the right-click information you received from other towns
was dependent in the original game on how many Taverns you owned, requiring two in order to see even an
estimate of how many units were present in each stack. This seemed like a pointless limitation, as well
as an unnecessary double dip since the Thieves' Guild already counted taverns to provide complete info.
Since tavern count is rather arbitrary to begin with and will vary greatly depending on the map, this
restriction has been removed. As mentioned earlier, Thieves' Dens on the map are now the only source of
the old "Visions" effect to provide full information on right-clicking heroes and towns. As for Thieves'
Guilds, they now always provide all of the information in the top section when in town, while the bottom
section will only be shown in external taverns on the adventure map. In either case, however, non-human
playable (AI only) players will not be shown at all in the Thieves' Guild.

A major general change is that Resource Silos have been removed. This more heavily impacts the factions
whose silos provided nice resources than those who got the shitty "wood and ore" ones, but it's a global
change nonetheless. Perhaps more notable is that, since we've also removed resource-generating artifacts
and hero specialties, there's a greater emphasis here on obtaining resources through the adventure map
and via trading. And speaking of trading, another significant change is that the exchange rates are now
better when you control fewer marketplaces and cap at five instead of nine; this also includes Artifact
Merchants and Mercenary Guild (formerly "Freelancers Guild"), both of which have their own unique rates.
Of particular note is that the latter now provides a profit for selling units rather than being garbage.

Shipyards are now substantially cheaper, both in terms of initial build cost and boats purchased (boats
from external shipyards still cost full price). More interestingly, towns now look north for a coastline
instead of to the south: specifically one tile up and three over as opposed to two down and one over.
This was changed because since towns are entered from the south, it was extremely uncommon for them to
meet the requirements and near impossible to create coastal towns that didn't look extremely janky. The
reason that it was set up like that to begin with was so that the game could be certain that any ships
would be accessible once built; these new settings place that responsibility on the mapmaker.

Note that the above change also affects the ability of Castle towns to construct Lighthouses, which have
been fixed in AH3M to only provide movement bonuses to the town's owner instead of to all players. They
have not changed aside from that, but we do see notable changes to most other unique buildings:

	 Defensive buildings (Glyphs of Fear, etc.) are now +5 instead of +2

	 Dungeon's Mana Vortex is now the spell point equivalent of the above (+50 to defending heroes)

	 Tower's Magic Library now allows the Mage Guild to sell scrolls for lv.1-3 spells

	 Tower's Watchtower now grants a speed bonus to defending units instead of extra visibility

	 Necro's Shroud of Night now reduces the speed of invading units rather than hiding map tiles

	 The Necro Amplifier's effect has been lowered (note that they stack) from 10% to 5%

	 Inferno's "Oblivion Portal" now warps you to any town you control

	 Dungeon's "Dominion Portal" now warps the nearest hero you own to town (once per week)

	 Rampart's Mystic Pond is now +2~4 of a random magical resource instead of +1~4

	 Magic University tuition has been raised from 2,000 to 2,500 gold (welcome to America)

Necropolis's "Death Machine" (formerly "Skeleton Transformer") has also been significantly reworked.
First and foremost, only first-level units now become Skeletons; most second-level units and beyond now
turn into Zombies, instead. Second, upgraded units will convert to their upgraded undead counterparts.
Third, there are more special results like how any dragon will turn into Bone Dragons: Dendroids become
Ghosts (seeing as they have neither bones nor flesh) as do Evil Eyes, Genies and Efreet become Vampires,
Monks, Mages, and Enchanters become Liches, and Horsemen become Night Riders. However, Hydras no longer
become Bone Dragons and, more importantly, units which are either already dead or were never alive to
begin with (i.e. Gargoyles, Golems, and Elemental Avatars) can no longer be converted at all.

Finally, the grail buildings have been overhauled. They're something of a moot point from a game balance
perspective since they rarely come into play and, when they do, usually serve to provide a comparatively
insignificant advantage to someone who is already in the lead. Much more interesting is the less common
prospect of them giving a fighting chance to a player who has fallen behind, and that is the angle that
the new bonuses focus on. In addition to doubling the growth bonus for all grail buildings from 50% to
100%, their unique effects are now all substantial stat bonuses to defending armies.

As for the Grail itself, it's again something that rarely came up since the computer was likely to beat
you to it in most cases. The only way to grab it first was to find the general area and then dig a few
hundred holes and pray you got lucky, which felt contrary to the spirit of its design. Here, as in the
mainline M&M series, digging for the grail now requires locating every obelisk for both AI(*) and human
players. And while doing so will still consume the remainder of your hero's turn, it no longer requires
you to have not yet moved at all since the balance reason for that restriction has been removed.

		(*Except on higher difficulty settings; this will be detailed later)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

					 MAP OBJECTS
					 -----------

The effects of most objects on the map have been changed, ranging from extremely minor to quite drastic.
We'll start off by going over the three basic items - gold, resources, and artifacts - and the numerous
places on the map where they can be found. Of particular note are the changes to treasure chests, which
now provide more gold relative to experience to compliment the experience table changes. This includes
"Sea" chests found in the water, which now also offer the same choice rather than just the gold.

	-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
	OBJECT		RESULT/QUANTITY			(ORIGINAL GAME)
	-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
	Gold		600~1000			(500~1000)
	Wood/Ore	6~10				(5~10)
	Gm/Cr/Sf/Mr	3~5				(3~6)
	-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
	Windmill	4~6 random rare resource	(3~6 random rare resource OR ore)
	Water Wheel	(500 * week of month) gold	(500 gold on first week, 1000 thereafter)
	-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
	Campfire	4~6 wood + 4~6 ore		(4~6 any resource + 400~600 gold)
	Lean-To		4~6 wood + 400~600 gold		(1~5 random resource)
	Wagon		3~5 random resource (2x)	(50% 2~5 resources, 40% lv.1~2 artifact)

	-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
	OBJECT		(ODDS)/RESULT			(ORIGINAL GAME)
	-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
	Treasure Chest	(30%) 1500 gold *OR* 500 exp.	(31%) 1000 gold *OR* 500 exp.
			(30%) 2000 gold *OR* 1000 exp.	(31%) 1500 gold *OR* 1000 exp.
			(30%) 2500 gold *OR* 1500 exp.	(31%) 2000 gold *OR* 1500 exp.
			(10%) lv.1 artifact		(7%)

	Mr. Bones	(80%) 1000~2000 gold		(1000 gold, only if backpack is full)
			(20%) lv.1~2 artifact		(no change)

	Templar's Grave	(80%) 4000~6000 gold		(-)
			(20%) lv.2~3 artifact		(30%/50%/15%/5% lv.1/2/3/4 artifact)

	Sea Chest	(60%) 1500 gold *OR* 500 exp.	(70%) 1500 gold
			(30%) 2000 gold *OR* 1000 exp.	(20%) nothing
			(10%) 1000 gold + lv.1 artifact	(1000 gold + lv. 1~2 artifact)

	Flotsam		(40%) 4~6 wood			(25% 5 wood)
			(30%) 3~5 wood + 200~400 gold	(25% 5 wood + 200 gold)
			(30%) 2~4 wood + 1~3 rare res.	(25% 10 wood + 500 gold)

	Castaway	(20%) +1 Attack (permanent)	(-)
			(20%) +1 Defense ("")		(-)
			(20%) +1 Magic ("")		(-)
			(20%) +1 Knowledge ("")		(-)
			(20%) lv.1~2 artifact		(55%/20%/20%/5% lv.1/2/3/4 artifact)

	-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
	CREATURE BANK/(ODDS)	GUARDIANS & QUANTITY (+UPG.)	REWARD
	-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
	Dwarven Treasury	Dwarves				Gold

	 (30%)			60 (+30)			7500
	 (30%)			70 (+35)			8000
	 (20%)			80 (+40)			8500
	 (20%)			90 (+45)			9000

	Gnarled Oak		Flies				Wood & Gold

	 (20%)			80  (+40)			25 / 1500
	 (20%)			100 (+50)			25 / 2500
	 (30%)			100 (+50)			30 / 2000
	 (30%)			120 (+60)			30 / 2500

	Abandoned Mine		Troglodytes			Ore & Gold

	 (20%)			80  (+40)			25 / 1500
	 (20%)			100 (+50)			25 / 2500
	 (30%)			100 (+50)			30 / 2000
	 (30%)			120 (+60)			30 / 2500

	Gem Bank		Nagas & Genies			Gems & Gold

	 (20%)			 4 (+2) /  6 (+3)		20 / 2000
	 (20%)			 6 (+3) /  8 (+4)		20 / 3000
	 (30%)			 6 (+3) /  8 (+4)		25 / 2000
	 (30%)			 8 (+4) / 10 (+5)		25 / 3000

	Mercury Cache		Demons & Efreet			Mercury & Gold

	 (20%)			 8 (+4) /  4 (+2)		20 / 2000
	 (20%)			10 (+5) /  6 (+3)		20 / 3000
	 (30%)			10 (+5) /  6 (+3)		25 / 2000
	 (30%)			12 (+6) /  8 (+4)		25 / 3000

	Crystal Reserves	Cyclopses & Ogres		Crystal & Gold

	 (20%)			 4 (+2) /  8 (+4)		20 / 2000
	 (20%)			 6 (+3) / 10 (+5)		20 / 3000
	 (30%)			 6 (+3) / 10 (+5)		25 / 2000
	 (30%)			 8 (+4) / 12 (+6)		25 / 3000

	Sulfur Stores		Medusas & Minotaurs		Sulfur & Gold

	 (20%)			 8 (+4) /  6 (+3)		20 / 2000
	 (20%)			12 (+6) /  8 (+4)		20 / 3000
	 (30%)			12 (+6) /  8 (+4)		25 / 2000
	 (30%)			16 (+8) / 10 (+5)		25 / 3000

	Conservatory		Griffins			Artifacts & Gold

	 (40%)			16 (+8)				1 (Lv.1) / 5000
	 (40%)			24 (+12)			1 (Lv.2) / 4000
	 (20%)			32 (+16)			2 (Both) / 3000

	Crypt			Vampires & Ghosts		Artifacts & Gold

	 (40%)			12 (+6)  / 18 (+9)		1 (Lv.2) / 5000
	 (40%)			18 (+9)  / 24 (+12)		1 (Lv.3) / 5000
	 (20%)			24 (+12) / 36 (+18)		2 (Both) / 2500

	Shipwreck		Water/Storm Avatars		Artifacts & Gold

	 (25%)			16 (+8)				1 (Lv.1) / 5000
	 (25%)			24 (+12)			1 (Lv.2) / 4000
	 (50%)			32 (+16)			2 (Both) / 3000

	Ghost Ship		Water/Storm Avatars & Ghosts	Artifacts & Gold

	 (30%)			12 (+6)  / 18 (+9)		1 (Lv.2) / 5000
	 (30%)			18 (+9)  / 24 (+12)		1 (Lv.3) / 5000
	 (40%)			24 (+12) / 36 (+18)		2 (Both) / 2500

	Dragon Horde	 	Green & Red Dragons		Artifacts & Gold

	 (30%)			4 (+2) / ""			1 (Lv.4)     / 10000
	 (30%)			6 (+3) / ""			2 (Lv.3,4)   / 20000
	 (20%)			6 (+3) / ""			2 (Lv.4,4)   / 15000
	 (20%)			8 (+4) / ""			3 (Lv.3,4,4) / 20000

    (Note: heroes no longer incur temporary morale penalties from Templar Graves, Crypts, or Ships)

Abandoned Mines, notably, now act as a creature bank rather than as a random mine once cleared. Further,
although not technically creature banks, Pyramids more or less effectively function as one. Rather than
rewarding invading heroes with a random lv.5 spell, the prize is now a lv.4 artifact. Also, Pyramids now
now contain 180 Mummies and 10 Ghost Dragons instead of Gold and Diamond golems.

	-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Next up, we have the map locations which temporarily boost luck and/or morale. These were of limited use
in the original game due to the above-discussed reasons of neither having much impact under the vanilla
ruleset. With a new formula now allowing them to be more impactful, it's no longer necessary for them to
provide large bonuses in order to be substantial. Thus, they all now provide a flat +1 bonus to either
luck or morale except for Mermaids who boost both (due to being much more inconvenient to access).

The locations which boosted both morale and movement, on the other hand, now boost movement exclusively
by a flat 800 points. Further, these locations can now be visited once per day (in addition to any time
after winning a battle) and now include buoys since it always seemed kind of strange that they weren't
movement boosters in the first place. The new effects of these objects are thus as follows:

		    +1 MORALE		 +1 LUCK		+800 MOVEMENT
		    -------------------------------------------------------------
		    Temple		 Idol of Fortune	Fountain of Youth
		    Swan Pond		 Lucky Fountain		Watering Hole
		    Rally Flag		 Fairy Ring		Oasis
		    Mermaid		 Mermaid		Buoy

		      (Note: visiting a Swan Pond no longer ends a hero's turn)

	-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Moving on to the permanent stat boosters, we don't see any changes to the basic +1 locations aside from
name changes to make them more indicative of what they do along with the above-mentioned changes to how
Castaways work. Schools of Magic and War in the original game were just +1 boosters that added a price
tag for the benefit of being able to choose one of two stats to raise; here, the boost is +2. Arenas and
Libraries of Enlightenment were curious since they seemed like they were meant to be counterparts rather
than an objectively better version of the School of War (Arenas) and a massively-overpowered boost of +2
to all stats for the mere cost of being level 10 (Libraries). AH3M splits the Library's across-the-board
bonus between it and Arenas, with Libraries now boosting only Magic and Knowledge while Arenas now raise
both Attack and Defense. Each now requires a combined minimum of 10 in the stats that they raise, thus
making them beneficial only to heroes who already excel in either field.

Of the map objects which provide experience, most of them have been changed. Wise Trees will now always
charge 2,000 gold instead of randomly charging 10 gems or nothing. More interestingly, they now provide
the benefit of gaining a level - +1 to a random stat and a skill boost of your choice - without actually
raising your level. It is thus no longer beneficial to put off visiting them until your level is higher
in order to maximize the amount of experience gained from them.

Sirens, rather than taking units away from you in exchange for experience, now fight you (90 Harpies and
30 Hags). The reward for winning is a permanent +100 boost to your hero's water movement and remains a
"once per hero" object. Altars of Sacrifice now only allow sacrificing units for all heroes, regardless
of alignment, with Rebel (formerly "Refugee") Camps now acting as their artifact equivalent. The former
now provides experience equal to 1/3 of the gold value for units (instead of 1/8 of their AI value) and
the latter considerably better value for artifacts depending on level, as seen below:

				      ARTIFACT EXP. VALUES
				    ------------------------
				    Lv.1 = 1500  (was 1000)
				    Lv.2 = 4000  (was 1500)
				    Lv.3 = 7500  (was 3000)
				    Lv.4 = 15000 (was 6000)

And then we have map locations which teach things to heroes. This technically no longer includes spell
shrines since, as noted earlier, they now sell spell scrolls rather than teach spells, but they're worth
bringing up again to note that they now ban the two Necromancer spells. Teachers (AKA "Witch Huts") now
respect the inability of a class to learn certain skills and, far more importantly, allow you to decline
their offer. Universities already did that, but now charge a bit more (2,500 gold) than before.

Conversely, we have Leprechauns (AKA "Mystical Garden"), formerly a weird Windmill/Water Wheel hybrid
that only gave out gems but now a vehicle to get rid of unwanted skills. There is no cost for this, and
the only restriction is that you can't unlearn your two starting skills. When you visit a Leprechaun, it
will offer to let you forget the bottom-most skill on your list; you can control which skill this is by
left-clicking them in the hero screen (again with the exception of your two starting skills).

	-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Trading Posts and Hill Forts are generally considered to be two of the best map objects (to the point of
being typically banned on random maps) since they allow players to effectively bypass hard restrictions:
the need to control multiple towns in order to get decent exchange rates and the need to build upgraded
dwellings to get upgraded units; that Hill Forts actually offered a discount for upgrading lower-leveled
units in the original game was downright inexplicable. Hill Forts now charge a premium to upgrade units
that increases with each unit level (see below) and all trading areas (Trading Posts, Black Markets, and
Mercenary Guilds) now offer rates equal to the number of markets you control plus one.

					HILL FORT RATES
					---------------
					  Lv.1 = 1.10
					  Lv.2 = 1.20
					  Lv.3 = 1.30
					  Lv.4 = 1.40
					  Lv.5 = 1.50
					  Lv.6 = 1.75
					  Lv.7 = 2.00

External dwellings receive a number of changes here. 1st-level external dwellings now charge instead of
joining for free and 5th-level dwellings and higher are no longer inherently guarded. Do note that the
map design accounts for this by having most external dwellings - especially higher-level ones - guarded
by actual random unit stacks instead. This, unfortunately, remains an issue for the random map editor.

Most importantly, however, they no longer cap at a single week's worth of units, leading to potentially
large reserves for the first players to acquire (and afford) them. Additionally, external dwellings that
you own will now show their population on hover/right-click rather than requiring an in-person visit to
see. This is now the sole benefit of having external dwellings flagged since, due to now being sizable
dwellings in their own right, they no longer provide growth bonuses to in-town dwellings.

As for more specific changes, Golem Factories now only sell Stone Golems with a new dwelling (which must
be manually specified in the map editor) selling Gold and Diamond Golems. AH3M also addresses the two
different styles of the four basic elemental confluxes - the big, unflaggable ones from Restoration of
Erathia and the new ones from Shadow of Death - by having the former charge resources instead of gold:

					    Air = Crystal
					  Earth = Sulfur
					   Fire = Mercury
					  Water = Gems

Garrisons were a curious structure since they offered nothing in the way of actual defense and, aside
from the anti-magic variety, were objectively worse than leaving units in a town where they'd have the
benefit of a hero with spells and stats. They now act similarly to a town with a Fort, providing siege
walls and a barricade, but no turrets. The appearance of the walls and barricade will vary depending on
the type of terrain and will match that of the faction most closely associated with it. As mentioned in
the Learning section earlier, there is no longer an experience bonus for siege battles. Also note that,
unlike normal siege battles, defending heroes are able to retreat (but not surrender) from garrisons.

Battles on Cursed Ground now only null the effects of luck and morale - which is a far more significant
effect than in the original game. This is notable from a thematic standpoint, as well, since it favors
Necropolis and Conflux (the "true" neutral faction) over those who can benefit from morale. Necropolis
actually benefits more since all undead units now treat Cursed Ground as native terrain. Similarly, the
four basic elemental units (but not their upgrades) receive a substantial bonus on elemental terrain.

Rather than allowing spells to be cast at master level regardless of the user's skill level, spells cast
on elemental terrain are now basic level minimum (as with spell scrolls) at half cost. This allows them
to be useful even for heroes who have experience with the element while still being useful for those who
don't. Magic Plains, which previously allowed ANY spell to be cast at master level, now provides the SP
discount to all four elements, but not the bonus to skill expertise.

Whirlpools no longer send units overboard and now effectively function as a water-based version of two-
way portals. More drastically, whirlpools are now linked as pairs (Zelda-style) rather than all of them
being connected to the entire network. These pairs are determined by the order in which they are placed
on the map (1~2, 3~4, 5~6, and so on) with the caveat that all surface whirlpools will be counted before
any of the underground ones, meaning that a map can only have a single whirlpool connection between the
surface and underground - this is an unfortunate technical limitation that I was unable to work around.
Two-way portals still function the same except for if there is more than one, they will work in sequence
(1 > 2 > 3 > and so on) rather than sending you to a destination at random.

And then a few other things that I couldn't really find a good way to slip in earlier...

   Stables on the map will no longer upgrade any Horsemen in your army to Crusaders

   Magic Springs now function identically to Magic Wells instead of doubling a hero's spell points

   Land-based mapmakers now reveal all non-water tiles in their map layer regardless of terrain

   Thieves' Dens now provide additional right-click info on units/heroes/towns (i.e. "Visions")

   External Shipyards are no longer flagged with ownership (this provided no benefit whatsoever)

   The Hut/Eye of the Magi and Scholar objects have been completely removed from the game

	-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Finally, all objects have been resorted/categorized in the map editor to make them easier to find. The
terrain-specific objects now begin with the mines and then any variants of any other objects specific to
that terrain type (i.e. snow-covered Windmills and Trading Posts), while the old "all terrain objects"
category now just contains the magical terrain overlays. Beyond that, the categories are as follows:

					 Towns & Heroes
					 Units & Dwellings
					 Gates & Teleporters
					 Locations
					 Pickups

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

					MISCELLANEOUS
					-------------

And finally, we'll wrap things up with the changes that don't fit anywhere else, which consist mainly of
various improvements to the user interface. In addition to the new title screen and the removal of the
windows menu bar, a more observant player might also notice that choosing to start a new game will now
default to the list of maps rather than a functionless background that requires an extra click to get to
where you're going. Double-clicking a map now brings you to the "team & player settings" (AKA "advanced
options") screen instead of starting the game, and clicking "Back" (which is now on the left side) from
that screen now returns you to the map selection screen instead of the main menu.

My reasoning for the above change is that the selection of factions and players is an important part of
the game setup, so calling it "advanced options" and making the button small and out of the way is not a
good design choice. The only reason that a player would ever want to start a game without going to this
screen would be to play completely at random, except the original game failed in this regard by always
defaulting the player to the first human-playable team instead of selecting one at random. In AH3M, a
random team will now be assigned when clicking "begin" from the map selection screen.

The map size filters have been removed since there are nowhere near enough maps in AH3M to necessitate
their existence. The map version and loss condition displays have been replaced and now instead show
information about whether the starting factions for each color are forced as well as any spells and/or
skills that are restricted. Note that this is a purely informational change: support for RoE/AB maps as
well as alternate loss conditions remains otherwise fully intact. Also, only human-playable teams are
displayed, both in the first column on the map menu as well as in the team & player settings screen.

It also struck me as odd that the default player color in the original game was red instead of blue like
it was in Heroes 2, especially since the main menu interface would suggest that blue still should be the
default color. Their new distribution keeps two basic thoughts in mind. One, games with just two or four
players (i.e. the first four slots) should include only the most basic colors: blue vs. red for just two
players and then add green and purple for players three and four. Yellow would have been a better choice
for the fourth slot than purple, but it's clear that the original developers had a hard time with it, as
well, and eventually pivoted to tan (which is decidedly NOT a basic color that should be in slot three).

The second thing that was kept in mind when re-arranging the colors is that it should allow meaningful
association with the faction most likely to go in that slot, at least in maps where the factions are
predetermined instead of randomized. One of the things that I loved about both Might & Magic VII and the
second Heroes of Might & Magic game was that the interface would match your alignment, and I wanted to
preserve that concept as much as possible here. Going in straight faction order wasn't going to work out
here, so I instead went in the order of opposing factions like so:

	Player 1 - Blue   (Castle/"Good")	Player 2 - Red    (Inferno/"Evil" or Stronghold)
	Player 3 - Green  (Rampart or Conflux)	Player 4 - Purple (Necropolis)
	Player 5 - Pink   (Tower)		Player 6 - Brown  (Dungeon or Fortress/"Neutral")
	Player 7 - Orange (Stronghold)		Player 8 - Teal   (Fortress or Conflux)

Players who enjoy random maps may be familiar with the "extended" hero right-click information that HD
mod adds to its team selection screen, showing starting stats/skills/spells/units instead of just their
specialty. This feature was notably absent from the standard map team selection screen, which I can only
assume is because it displays a hero's default information rather than any map-specific custom settings.
AH3M shows the extended information on the second hero selection menu (where all of the hero portraits
for each faction are visible), although the aforementioned limitation remains intact. However, it will
only come into play for heroes who normally start with the Sailing skill on dry maps.

An actual mechanical change that you'll run into when setting up a new game is that all three starting
bonuses have been revised. We mentioned earlier in the artifacts section that the "artifact" bonus will
no longer provide you with something inappropriate for your starting town. That said, the artifact bonus
always seemed like the clear winner over the extra gold or resources in the original game simply due to
the low quantity of the latter two. Even the cheapest treasure-level artifact is of greater value than a
mere 500~1000 extra gold or just a few extra resources. The starting gold bonus is now a static value of
2500 and the resource bonus is now 5 of the faction's favored rare resource plus 5 each of wood and ore,
with Conflux's rare resource being chosen at random since Conflux doesn't favor any specific one.

	-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Speaking of wood and ore, the positions of ore and mercury on the resource display bar have been swapped
so that the two common resources and the four rare ones are now properly grouped together. Less notable
is that the kingdom overview screen now displays all equipped artifacts in a more sensible order as well
as showing the fifth "misc." slot (this screen was never updated for the SoD expansion) in place of the
spellbook (which is pointless to display since every hero now has one by default). Also, clicking on the
hero/town status window no longer cycles through various displays because who actually used that thing.

The most noticeable interface edit to the main adventure screen, however, is that the buttons have been
rearranged into a more intuitive layout. Two of the buttons - Next Hero and View Puzzle Map - have been
replaced. The latter remains accessible from the "View World" display while the former is now a property
of the "move hero" button/shortcut. If "move hero" is used on a hero with no path set or movement points
remaining, it will instead move to the next hero. This is meant to streamline the typical player use of
both buttons. To complement this, the "sleep/wake" button now acts to remove a hero's movement path if
one is set (something that previously could not be done) instead of disabling them.

As for the new buttons, the first is "Activate Object", which re-activates whatever a hero is sitting on
without needing to step off of it and then back on. The spacebar does the same thing, but it's not very
intuitive and is something that many players are unaware of. Moreover, this removes a major reason why
players who prefer to play with only a mouse still need to use a keyboard. Speaking of which, the other
new button allows you to sort heroes and towns - again, a function that exists within HD mod that isn't
widely known, but again involving use of the keyboard (shift/alt click) where a button does not.

That said, by far the most common reason players will use a keyboard is to make use of the shortcuts to
easily split unit stacks added by HD Mod. To this end, the buttons to switch between "tight" and "loose"
formations and to disable tactics mode (which were, respectively, virtually and completely useless) have
been replaced to emulate them. The formation buttons switch between "move/combine stacks" mode, which is
normal mouse behavior, and "one-click stack split" mode, which will cause clicking on units to behave as
either shift+click (splits units evenly) or ctrl+click (move one unit to a new stack) depending on what
the former tactics button is toggled to (shift+click is the default setting).

As mentioned earlier when discussing Leprechauns, something that couldn't be done at all in the original
game was sorting hero skills, which can now be done by left-clicking the skill icon in the hero screen.
Doing so will move that skill to the bottom of the list with the exception of the hero's two starting
skills, which can't be moved. Note that this does serve a minor mechanical purpose, as well, since the
aforementioned Leprechauns will allow you to forget whichever skill is at the end of your list.

Keyboard support was kept in mind, however. The status bar labels for UI buttons will now indicate their
appropriate shortcut key (if applicable), and the (R)estart Scenario shortcut key from the base game has
been reinstated here (HD mod changed it to a Dimension Door radius viewer). HD Mod also added a somewhat
clunky menu of mostly-redundant shortcuts accessible via F5 or middle clicking. Of those shortcuts, only
two were new/unique: view map gridlines, which is now set in the system config menu; and "replay current
player turn", which has been removed as it was not a particularly useful feature.

The automatic map scroll when the mouse cursor goes to the edge of the game window is an rather annoying
feature that I wanted to disable, and so the slowest setting is now simply "off". Similarly, the combat
animation speed settings have all been sped up; instead of unplayably slow, painfully slow, and decent,
they are now: leisurely, brisk, and ludicrous speed. The same is now also true of hero movement speed.

	-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lastly, let's talk difficulty. There are two distinct difficulty settings in the game: map difficulty, a
setting that in the original game served no purpose but to inform players what to expect from said map,
and player difficulty, the iconic chess pieces which oddly posed "hard" as the middle/default setting.
These labels are now: Very Easy, Easy, Normal, Hard, and Very Hard, with "Normal" as the, well, normal
difficulty level. By and large, this was already the case since most of what is influenced by difficulty
are subtle AI decisions that already considered the third setting out of five to be the average one.

The most obvious (if not the most impactful) thing that this setting affects is the player's starting
resources. These values are listed in the Printme, with those of the AI being the inverse: i.e. on Easy
difficulty, the AI begins with what a human player would on Hard, and on Very Hard the AI will start off
with what a human player would on Very Easy. On Normal, everyone starts with the same amount.

Aside from resources, a close second difficulty factor in the original game was how quickly the AI would
begin digging for the grail, which was an issue purely because of how unfair it was on higher difficulty
levels. While the AI can still cheat at higher levels, it's nowhere near the same magnitude as before.

				Very Easy... AI does not look for grail
				Easy........ AI must find all obelisks
				Normal...... AI must find all obelisks
				Hard........ AI must find 75% of obelisks
				Very Hard... AI must find 50% of obelisks

Most notably in AH3M, random unit stacks on the map are now directly impacted by difficulty in two ways.
First, rather than growing by 10% per week, the formula is now as follows:

     WEEKLY RANDOM UNIT GROWTH = 1 + Month + Map Size [1~4] + Player Difficulty [1~5] - Unit Lv.(*)

					(*Minimum Growth of 1)

The above is notably distinct from units in unowned towns, which followed their own unique/weird/random
formula in the original game. Here, unowned towns simply no longer accumulate guards. Like with external
dwellings, the map design accounts for this by assigning guards to all neutral towns by default.

Secondly, the random unit "upstack" (the single stack of upgraded units that sometimes appears in random
stacks of base units) is now determined by the unit's aggression (see below) instead of the original
formula which was meant to seem random, but was in fact deterministic based on its map coordinates.

				    Minimum aggression for upstack:

					    Very Easy... 10
					    Easy........ 8
					    Normal...... 6
					    Hard........ 4
					    Very Hard... 2

Finally, AH3M allows starting hero levels and army size to scale with difficulty if so specified in the
editor. This is mainly important for quest-style maps with designated AI opponents where the goal is for
human player(s) to achieve their objective with little to no outside interference, since the difficulty
setting will otherwise have little impact. Since such heroes are generally set not to move until the
player attacks, they won't gain any more experience than that which they start with. Such maps typically
also prevent AI players from increasing their army size over time, making them completely static fights.

Given the above, as well as to avoid confusion with map difficulty, player difficulty has been rebranded
in AH3M as "handicap level". You may also notice that, rather than a percentage (since this setting acts
as a multiplier in the original game), the setup screen will now display your "base" score as determined
by the size of the selected map as well as the handicap level. Your final score will subtract the number
of days taken to win and add a bonus equal to how many obelisks were hit times the map difficulty (1~5),
which is then doubled if you find the grail. There's no longer a bonus for defeating all opponents since
it's A) already the win condition on most maps and B) something I don't want to encourage if it isn't.

				The new scoring formula is as follows:

		 Base Score = (Handicap Level [1~5] * 75) + (Map Size [1~4] * 25)
     Final Score = (Base Score) - (*Days) + (Map Difficulty [1~5] * Obelisks Found * (Grail [0~1]+1))

				  *(For team maps, double this value)

The table which assigns a ranking to you depending on your final score has been rewritten to be in line
with both the new relative power levels of each unit as well as the expected results of the new formula.
The original formula tended toward little variance in scores regardless of performance; here, you should
expect to see slightly higher scores than before if you play relatively well - or much lower ones if you
don't. As for the rankings themselves, they now range from Peasant to Azure Dragon (see below), neither
of which were present in the previous table since it was also never updated for the SoD expansion.

       0-4  = Peasant     100-104 = Gog           200-204 = Troll         300-304 = Horseman
       5-9  = Serpentfly  105-109 = Orc           205-209 = Monk          305-309 = Night Rider
      10-14 = Pixie       110-114 = Ghost         210-214 = Lich          310-314 = Hydra
      15-19 = Gremlin     115-119 = Elf           215-219 = Roc           315-319 = Behemoth
      20-24 = Skeleton    120-124 = Evil Eye      320-224 = Genie         320-324 = Bone Dragon
      25-29 = Goblin      125-129 = Gnoll         225-229 = Dendroid      325-329 = Firebird
      30-34 = Imp         130-134 = Golem         230-234 = Gold Golem    330-334 = Green Dragon
      35-39 = Troglodyte  135-139 = Nomad         235-239 = Minotaur      335-339 = Devil
      40-44 = Halfling    140-144 = Hell Hound    240-244 = Fiend         340-344 = Red Dragon
      45-49 = Centaur     145-149 = Mummy         245-249 = Gorgon        345-349 = Giant
      50-54 = Pikeman     150-154 = Griffin       250-254 = Enchanter     350-354 = Angel
      55-59 = Zombie      155-159 = Basilisk      255-259 = Mind Avatar   355-359 = Chaos Hydra
      60-64 = Rogue       160-164 = Mage          260-264 = Naga          360-364 = Dread Behemoth
      65-69 = Archer      165-169 = Medusa        265-269 = Cyclops       365-369 = Ghost Dragon
      70-74 = Dwarf       170-174 = Vampire       270-274 = Diamond Golem 370-374 = Phoenix
      75-79 = Harpy       175-179 = Pegasus       275-279 = Magic Avatar  375-379 = Gold Dragon
      80-84 = Boar        180-184 = Demon         280-284 = Efreeti       380-384 = Archdevil
      85-89 = Wolf        185-189 = Ogre          285-289 = Manticore     385-389 = Black Dragon
      90-94 = Gargoyle    190-194 = Swordsman     290-294 = Unicorn       390-394 = Titan
      95-99 = Lizardman   195-199 = Sharpshooter  295-299 = Wyvern        395-399 = Archangel

					400+ = Azure Dragon

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------




				    7. BUGS & KNOWN ISSUES




---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

				     UNFIXED BUGS FROM VANILLA
				     -------------------------

  AI heroes are unable to cast the Dispel spell (to my knowledge; not 100% confirmed)

  Players are unable to recruit from ally-owned towns/dwellings or use their Oblivion Portals

  Slain cloned units are reported as post-combat casualties

  The Berserk spell does not appear in the battle logs

  The "History" button in combat has no status bar text label or right-click information (HD Mod bug)

  Morale effects from mixed factions/undead units are not listed on the main display in the hero menu

  Magical terrain (i.e. heavy clouds) is functional but visually overridden during siege battles

  The map editor's search function is not able to locate random level/faction-specific unit dwellings

  Battle text will show the maximum damage for multi-target spells if not reduced for all targets

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

					AH3M-SPECIFIC BUGS
					------------------

  The AI does not respect changes to many objects, most notably whirlpools and the Dungeon Portal

  AI heroes with the Necromancy skill occasionally have empty (0 units) Zombie stacks

  Ammo Carts are able to target/attack adjacent enemy units, but will not deal any damage

  Erroneous "wait" or "0 damage" messages appear in the battle logs when AI players use Ammo Carts

  Attacking siege defense structures does not cost or require shots for Cyclops Brutes

  Defending heroes in garrisons may retreat, but not surrender

  Golem Factories are mislabeled as Behemoth Lairs when right-clicking them

  Golem Forges (Gold/Diamond Golems) will not show population on right-click like other dwellings

  External Shipyards are flagged with ownership (seen in Kingdom Overview) despite having no effect

  Arenas do not have additional right-click info detailing their function after visiting one

  Magic Springs are mislabeled as Magic Wells in the message text due to sharing the same function

  Recalled hero portraits will not properly display in taverns in the Dragon Quest map

  No SFX is played when selling artifacts at the Artifact Traders

  The enter key does not work to begin the game in the map selection screen

  Several keyboard shortcuts will show the wrong interface buttons being pressed

  A sound effect is still played when clicking on dummied-out buttons on the main or other menus

  Enabling "HD+" mode in the HD Mod launcher will cause some setup menu items to appear incorrectly

  The map editor's search function is not able to locate Abandoned Mines

  The map editor still uses the old positioning for warnings about landlocked Shipyards

  Two-way portals can break under specific circumstances and will remain broken on that save file

	-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A brief explanation of the two-way portal bug is that on any map where there is more than two of any one
specific type of portal (only Dragon Quest and War of the Magi feature this) it is possible to get two
heroes on the same map tile by entering a portal with the destination occupied. Rather than failing or
sending you to the next exit in sequence, it will send you to the occupied exit instead, permanently
breaking the exit portal on that save file. This is a low-priority fix since portals are a PITA to code.

Additionally to the above, there are some transient bugs with currently unknown triggers and no reliable
way to replicate them. If you experience any of the following, please send me a save file where the bug
can be replicated as well as an explanation of exactly what was done to do so.

  Markets on rare occasions load with null trade rates; exiting and re-entering them will correct this

  It is sometimes possible to target enemy units with the medical tent; doing so will crash the game

  The "activate" button sometimes does not work unless you click off of and then back onto the hero

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------




				    8. VERSION HISTORY & FUTURE




---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

	Version 2.0l (June 11, 2025)

  Fixed a crash in the routine where O-Magic from Anti-Magic reduces elemental damage from units

  Cursed Ground no longer incorrectly prevents spellcasting units from casting their spells

  Corrected a small error in the hero/town sorting code that prevented towns from sorting

  Fixed an improperly-impassable road in War of the Magi

	-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

	Version 2.0k (June 08, 2025)

  Fixed a bug preventing enemy heroes in quest maps from having Ammo Carts/First Aid Tents

  Nagas and Cyclopses now how have the correct high-end damage (18 > 20 and 24 > 30, respectively)

  Fixed instances in several maps of units blocking treasure able to be bypassed via the Fly spell

  Redesigned Stronghold's starting area in Old World

	-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

	Version 2.0j (June 08, 2025)

  The Sunray bonus for hero specialists is now correctly applied (this also fixes a potential crash)

  Repair scrolls now properly allow fixing broken war machines out of combat

  Soulbinder now properly blocks physical statuses and the Toxic Cloud spell

  Clarified that Toxic Cloud respects O-Body for immunity instead of unliving

  War of the Magi - moved the green gates blocking the tertiary Conflux towns into the water

  Fixed an improperly-passable tile for Golem Forges (Gold/Diamond Golem dwelling)

	-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

	Version 2.0i (June 07, 2025)

  Fixed an incorrect pointer introduced in the previous update that would lead to crashes in combat

	-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

	Version 2.0h (June 07, 2025)

  Heroes with a Learning specialty now correctly receive skill bonuses from Learning artifacts

  Mind Avatars now correctly check for O-Mind instead of O-Body for damage reduction

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	Version 2.0g (June 06, 2025)

  Fixed a bug in the ranged attack routine that could on rare occasions crash the game via auto-combat

  Fixed a bug where unit status procs were more likely than intended if attackers outnumbered defenders

  Fixed incorrect elemental attack settings for Mages/Archmages and Air/Magic/Storm/Magma Avatars

  Trolls and Gold/Diamond Golems now properly receive combat bonuses when fighting on native terrain

  Base elemental avatar elemental terrain bonus from +3 to +2; dual-element avatars now get +1 on both

  Magic Avatars now treat magical plains as native terrain

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	Version 2.0f (June 05, 2025)

  Fixed a bug with the Toxic Cloud spell that would crash the game when cast at expert/master level

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	Version 2.0e (June 05, 2025)

  Swapped the levels of the Dead Man's Boots (now a Minor artifact) and Vampire's Cowl (now a Treasure)

  Fixed improper handling of magical terrain SP discounts accidentally introduced in previous update

  Fixed a bug where Fortress & Conflux heroes had an aggression penalty for neutral/unaffiliated units

  Troglodytes will no longer show resistance notifications for Blind or Petrify

  Clarified the in-game and Printme descriptions of the Gremlin Engineer ability

  War of the Magi - player 1's second town no longer has dwellings built by default

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	Version 2.0d (June 02, 2025)

  Fixed a bug where AI heroes with the Dispel spell would invisibly cast it every turn of combat

  Elemental terrain now correctly allows casting of high-level spells without the requisite skill

  Paralyzed units are correctly no longer able to retaliate

  Blinded units now correctly deal 50% damage when retaliating instead of 25%

  Killer Breath no longer displays resistance notifications erroneously and/or when the target is dead

  Corrected the in-game description of the Quicksand spell to indicate its 2-turn duration

  Corrected the in-game description of the Dragonscale Armor to indicate the correct stat boost

  Improved the formatting of the in-game description of spell scrolls

  Bull's Eye - fixed poor random unit placement in player 2's starting zone

  Dragon Quest - corrected an oversight where Bonmalmo was able to build the upgraded lv.5 dwelling

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	Version 2.0c (May 27, 2025)

  Fixed a bug where the damage modification from Attack and Defense was being incorrectly calculated

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	Version 2.0b (May 27, 2025)

  Fixed a bug where the game could crash if a human player placed a unit next to an AI ammo cart

  Fixed the broken activation tile for player 2's starting Lumber Yard in War of the Magi

  Added green gates to the river ways in War of the Magi to prevent invading player 3 via water

  Added Fly scrolls as high-level treasure to Divided Lands, Old World, and Shadow Monopoly

  Lizardmen and Lizard Hunters now have the correct Attack & Defense (5/7 instead of 5/6 and 6/7)

  Dwarves and Battle Dwarves now correctly indicate 50% status resistance instead of 25%

  Updated placeholder text accidentally left in as a piece of random tavern advice

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	Version 2.0a (May 25, 2025)

  Fixed a bug with external tavern hiring that was not charging gold and could lead to crashes

  Added scrolls of Fly and Town Portal to the center zones in Bull's Eye

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	Version 2.0 (May 25, 2025)

  Magic skills are now less common outside of forced intervals, particularly for might heroes

  Completely unlearnable skills by class are now much more limited

	---> Rampart heroes cannot learn Fire Magic nor can Inferno heroes learn Water Magic
	---> Necromancy is limited to Necro heroes, who can't learn Leadership or First Aid (no change)

  Air Magic is now the least common element for Fortress (instead of Fire)

  Witch starting skill now Water or Air Magic (instead of Resistance)

  Druid starting skill now Resistance (instead of Earth Magic)

  Several classes now have different secondary (non-starting) major skills:

	Undertaker   Sailing      (was Necromancy)
	Warlock      Fire Magic   (was Wisdom)
	Battlemage   Sorcery      (was Fire Magic)
	Witch        Wisdom       (was Learning)
	Mystic(*)    (All)Magic   (was Sorcery)

	(*Renamed from Sorcerer since Sorcery is no longer a major skill)

  Lowered lv.7 unit specialist speed bonus from +2 to +1

  Changed the skill specialties of several heroes:

	Thane   (Tower)    Resistance (replaces Tactics)
	Quinn   (Inferno)  Logistics  (replaces Agatha as a Resistance specialist)
	Jasmine (Dungeon)  Tactics    (replaces Logistics)

	Lilith  (Inferno)  Luck       (was Quinn's specialty)
	Ragnar  (Inferno)  Devils     (was Lilith's specialty)
	Kaine   (Inferno)  Imps       (was Ragnar's specialty)
	Agatha  (Inferno)  Mysticism  (was Kaine's specialty)

  Added Cure & Slow spell specialists; removed Toxic Cloud, Enslave, & Fate specialists:

	Melodia  (Rampart)     Cure      (replaces Haste)
	Solomon  (Tower)       Weakness  (replaces Enslave)
	Daremyth (Tower)       Haste     (replaces Fate)
	Thant    (Necropolis)  Slow      (replaces Toxic Cloud)
	Alamar   (Dungeon)     Harm      (replaces Enslave)
	Branwen  (Fortress)    Slow      (replaces Enslave)
	Deneb    (Fortress)    Cure      (replaces Bless)
	Jasper   (Conflux)     Slow      (replaces Stoneskin)

  Harm spell specialty reverted to double damage as in the original game rather than +50% damage

  Several minor changes to hero starting spells

	---> Repair, Wizard Eye, & Torchlight (new spell) now appear as starting spells
	---> No heroes start with a 3rd-level spell now except for Vey (Stronghold)

  Wisdom now allows additional spellcasts each round instead of gating high-level spells

	---> Each spell must be of a different element; Master Wisdom allows one of all four
	---> Lv.3/4/5 spells now require their elemental skill at basic/expert/master level to cast
	---> Lv.1 spells now only improve with basic skill and lv. 2 only with basic & expert
	---> Wisdom no longer follows the "must be offered every (X) levels" rule
	---> Switched to use former Scholar GFX

  Diplomacy now reduces the cost of join offers (20%/40%/60%) rather than allowing them

	---> All random units can offer to join unless set to maximum aggression
	---> Aggression multiplies the cost of join offers; most randoms have 3-7
	---> Alignment conflicts (i.e. good heroes vs. evil units) will raise aggression
	---> "Sympathy" mechanic removed (no bonus for having the unit in your army)

  First Aid no longer increases unit health and solely affects the performance of the tent

	---> Basic First Aid allows the tent to remove physical statuses
	---> Expert level allows the tent to overfill a unit's HP (up to 2x the unit's maximum)
	---> Master level allows the tent to act twice per round

  Ballistics (renamed back from Engineering) now solely affects the performance of the ballista

	---> Allows the ballista to ignore range (Bas), deal 2x damage (Exp), and shoot twice (Mas)
	---> Ballista damage calculation now uses hero level instead of attack
	---> The Ballista now has the correct Attack value of 10 (was 5)

  The Catapult now fires 1~2 shots (always retargeting after the first), dealing 1~2 damage each

  The health of war machines now scales with hero level (20 * lv. for all of them)

  Ammo carts now deliver up to 2 shots to a unit each turn instead of having a passive effect

  Raised Scouting carryover limit to 500/750/1000 and lowered view radius bonus to original values

  Raised Learning spell point bonus from 1x/1.5x/2x to 1x/2x/3x

  Resistance now defends against Killer Breath (see below)

  Renamed several units & unit abilities:

	Elite Centaur -> Centaurian
	  War Unicorn -> Magic Unicorn
	 Boss Gremlin -> Gremlin Engineer
	       Djinni -> Noble Efreet
	       Gorgon -> Taurus
	   Disembowel -> Killer Breath
	        Aging -> Wither

  Renamed several unit dwellings to include the name of the residing unit

	Altar of Wishes -> Genie Altar
	Golden Pavilion -> Naga Pavilion
	Fire Factory    -> Gog Factory
	Kennels         -> Hound Kennels
	Well of Souls   -> Ghost Well
	Estate          -> Vampire Estate
	Mystic Refuge   -> Fairy Refuge

  Reworked the roles of the four upgraded elemental avatars

	---> Magma Avatars are now ranged attackers instead of Ice Avatars
	---> Ice Avatars now have the highest defense and health
	---> Energy Avatars now have the highest attack and speed
	---> Both ranged and melee attacks from upgraded avatars are now dual-element

  Added "aura" abilities (i.e. the Unicorn status resistance aura) to several units:

	     Paladins: +2 Morale
	   Archdemons: +2 Luck
	Ghost Dragons: -2 Morale
	 Gold Dragons: 50% Status Resistance (replaces Unicorn ability)
	 Mind Avatars: O-Mind
	Magic Avatars: O-Magic 3/4

  Raised low-end unit status resistance from 20% to 25% and added 75% status resistance

	---> Dwarves now have 50% status resistance (as Battle Dwarves) instead of 20%
	---> Gnolls/Gnoll Marauders now have 25% status resistance (new ability)
	---> Azure Dragons now have 75% status resistance instead of O-Mind & O-Body

  Magic Unicorns now cast Cure (3x, 5 power, basic lv.), replacing their old status resistance/aura

  Gremlin Engineers can now repair war machines (1 damage per Gremlin) and no longer have shots

  Blind ("fear" in 1.6x) is now a physical status that lowers damage instead of incapacitating units

	---> Blind can be set by Unicorns/Magic Unicorns or Evil Eyes/Beholders (melee or shot)

  The poison status now deals damage over time instead of reducing maximum health

	---> Naga Queens can now set poison instead of retaliating twice

  The petrify status now reduces all damage by 75% instead of just physical damage

  Disease now lowers Attack & Defense by 6 (instead of 3) and Speed by 2 (unchanged)

	---> Devils/Archdevils can now set disease (Archdevils have a higher chance of doing so)

  Moved inherent Pain Reflection from Archdevils back to Noble Efreet

	---> Noble Efreet no longer lower target's defense (as Sunray)

  Mummies now set Enslave instead of incapacitating units (via the old Fear/Blind status)

  Added new damage bonuses to several units

	---> Gremlins/Gremlin Engineers deal double damage to enemy war machines
	---> Troglodyte Soldiers deal +25% damage if their morale is higher than foe's
	---> Gnoll Marauders deal +25% damage with initiating attacks (instead of no foe retaliation)

  Adjusted the shot count of many units

	---> Gogs/Magogs now have 2 shots instead of 12 (Inferno now sells ammo carts as in vanilla)
	---> Orc Warriors now have 2 shots instead of 1
	---> Cyclops Brutes now have 2 shots (base Cyclopses still only have 1)
	---> Lizard Hunters now have 8 shots (base Lizardmen still only have 6)
	---> Storm and Magma Avatars now have 4 shots instead of 12
	---> All other units with elemental shots now have 8 instead of 12
	---> The Ballista now has 12 shots instead of unlimited ammo

  Raised the defense bonus for the Defend command from 20% to 25%

  Fixed two bugs pertaining to the preemptive retaliation ability of Halberdiers:

	...no longer ignore the "enemy can't retaliate" ability
	...no longer incorrectly allow more retaliations on lethal strikes

  Skeletons now have the correct growth rate (16 instead of 12)

  Raised Medusa growth rate (4 -> 5)

  Goblins now have the correct Attack and Defense values (5/4 instead of 4/3)

  Lowered the defense-ignore ability of Behemoths/Dread Behemoths from 40%/80% to 33%/66%

  Fire Avatars no longer possess the "Flying" ability (as in the original game)

  Fairy Dragon spell mastery from unskilled to expert (as in the original game)

  Enchanters now cast Bless in place of Cure

  Slightly adjusted cost of many units

	Griffins	200	(was 150)
	---------------------------------
	Battle Dwarves	175	(was 150)
	Elves		200	(was 150)
	Dendroids	350	(was 300)
	---------------------------------
	Mage		350	(was 300)
	Archmage	450	(was 400)
	Genie		400	(was 450)
	---------------------------------
	Gog		125	(was 100)
	Magog		175	(was 150)
	Noble Efreeti	1100   (was 1200)
	---------------------------------
	Vampire		350	(was 300)
	Power Lich	750	(was 700)
	---------------------------------
	Evil Eye	200	(was 150)
	Minotaur	450	(was 500)
	Minotaur King	600	(was 750)
	Scorpicore	1300   (was 1350)
	---------------------------------
	Wolf		100	(was 125)
	Black Wolf	175	(was 200)
	Roc		450	(was 400)
	Thunderbird	700	(was 600)

  Several spells have reduced effectiveness due to the above-mentioned skill changes

	---> Elemental resistance spells now cap at half damage (75% for dual-element attacks)
	---> Haste now caps at +2 speed (+3 for specialists)
	---> Slow now caps at 33% reduction (50% for specialists)
	---> Bless/Curse no longer have a minimum effect of +/- 1 damage per unit in stack
	---> Cure now removes physical statuses only at basic level and is no longer mass effect
	---> Berserk radius reverted to cap at 2 hexes

  Raised SP cost and general effectiveness (damage spells in particular) of lv.3-5 spells

  Renamed/reworked several spells, reverting some confusing name changes:

	         Fear (AKA Blind) -> (now a physical status, no longer a spell)
	     Despair (AKA Sorrow) -> Fear
	     Berserk (AKA Frenzy) -> Flamestrike (see below)
	      Chaos (AKA Berserk) -> Berserk (back to its original name)
		    Meteor Strike -> Meteor Shower (back to its original name)

  The effects of the Wizard Eye spell now persist until the end of turn

	---> Now also shows treasure chests (on land only)
	---> Redundant (extra) castings will no longer cost SP (as the Water Walk/Fly spells)

  New spell: Torchlight (replaces Fear/Blind) increases hero's view radius until the end of turn

	---> Has same redundant casting protection as Wizard Eye

  Fortune is now a second-level spell (replacing Fear/Blind; Torchlight is the new 1-SP fire spell)

	---> Also has new SFX since Fortune's old SFX is now used by Torchlight

  Recall is now an Earth spell and returns the caster to the hiring pool with their army intact

	---> Basic Earth magic: hero may be re-hired from your capital city
	---> Expert Earth magic: hero may be re-hired from any town
	---> Master Earth magic: hero may be re-hired from any tavern, including external ones
	---> AI players will treat this spell as Town Portal

  New spell: Zoom (replaces Earthquake) allows target unit to fly and increases speed for 1 turn

	---> Expert and Master Air Magic increase the spell's duration to 2/3 turns
	---> This is the spell now cast by Master Genies (3x, 3 power, basic lv.)

  Fly and Water Walk now apply movement penalties to impassable tiles instead of their old turn% limit

  Fly now halves the movement penalty for rough terrain rather than eliminating it

  Warp now marks a hero's location on the map and will return them to that position when cast again

  Repair can now both heal damaged war machines and repair destroyed ones, both in and out of combat

	---> Repairing destroyed war machines requires Earth Magic

  Strength/Weakness and Heroism/Fear now cancel one another out as Bless/Curse and Haste/Slow do

  Sunray is now a standard-duration status effect that is no longer unremovable or cumulative

	---> Raised magnitude from 3/6 to 4/8
	---> Changed specialty bonus from +6 to +(target unit lv.)

  Dispel now removes all non-physical statuses from all units on the battlefield at basic level

	---> Expert Air Magic: selective status removal from allied units (negative only)
	---> Master Air Magic: selective status removal from enemy units (positive only)

  Flamestrike adds fire damage to melee attacks and is no longer a mind spell or reduces defense

  Counterstrike now doubles retaliation damage, only adding more retaliations at expert/master level

  Anti-Magic now grants protection as the O-Magic ability instead of complete immunity to spells

	---> O-Magic now also resists magical statuses in addition to reducing damage
	---> Anti-Magic will not stack with/is not effective on units with inherent O-Magic

  Quicksand now binds unit to current hex (as Dendroid ability) instead of its old effect

	---> Lasts 2 turns, skill level increases effect radius (caster's Magic power has no effect)

  Enslave is now a 4th-level spell; effectiveness is much higher (100x), duration is 3(E)/4(M) turns

	---> Clone is now a 3rd-level spell, taking the place of Enslave

  Sacrifice now allows reviving unliving/undead units (sacrificed stack must still be living)

	---> Formula now adds magic power to # of units (2x at master) instead of unit health

  Revival spells (Repair, Reanimate, Resurrection) no longer have permanence checks

  Purify is now single-target and kills a set percentage of units in addition to dealing damage

	---> Now uses old Prayer animation and has new SFX

  Toxic Cloud may now set poison at expert and master level and can no longer miss on living units

	---> Now uses Weakness/Acid Breath GFX (swapped with Weakness/Minotaur King enrage ability)

  Meteor Shower now deals half damage to units outside of the central/target hex

  Armageddon damage is now halved by O-Fire instead of ignoring it completely

  Lowered magnitude of Elemental Summon spells from 10x to 5x

  Fire Wall now correctly displays damage on right-click

  The Stoneskin spell is no longer effective on war machines

	---> Spell descriptions are now more clear about what will and will not work on war machines

  Redesigned the spellbook layout and behavior to look better and be easier to read

	---> Adventure spells are now grayed out/disabled when in combat and vise versa
	---> Spells that your hero cannot cast for any other reason (i.e. skill) are also grayed out

  Overhauled the odds of spells appearing in mage guilds

	---> Replaced the old values with M (83.3%), C+ (66.6%), C (50%), U (25%), and R (10%)
	---> Mage Guilds in all towns are now expanded (as Tower with Magic Library)

  Increased the cost of spells from Mage Guilds

	Lv. 1	50	(was 25)
	Lv. 2	100	(was 50)
	Lv. 3	250	(was 100)
	Lv. 4	500	(was 250)
	Lv. 5	1,000	(was 500)

  Tower's Magic Library now sells scrolls for lv.1-3 spells

  Dungeon's portal now summons the nearest hero you own once per week instead of acting as a dwelling

	---> It is now more expensive to build and is no longer required to build the lv.3 dwelling
	---> It now requires the Mana Vortex and is required for the lv.7 dwelling upgrade
	---> Swapped the resource costs of the portal with the Mana Vortex

  Changed the output of Necropolis's Death Machine (formerly "Death Converter") for several units

	---> Archers/Griffins/Swordsmen now give the correct results
	---> Enchanters now become Liches (as Monks and Mages do)
	---> Evil Eyes/Beholders now become Ghosts instead of Zombies
	---> Only dragons will become Bone Dragons instead of any 7th-level unit

  The Rampart & Inferno grails now correctly give +3 luck instead of only +2

  Fixed a bug where Fortress's Glyphs of Fear raised attack & defense while Blood Obelisk did nothing

  Changed the Blacksmith contents of several towns:

	---> Castle  -> First Aid Tent (instead of Ballista)
	---> Tower   -> Ballista       (instead of Ammo Cart)
	---> Inferno -> Ammo Cart      (instead of Ballista)
	---> Conflux -> Catapult only  (instead of First Aid Tent)

  Raised the values of the First Aid Tent and Ammo Cart from 500/1000 to 1000/1500

  Town blacksmiths now require heroes to end their turn in town to repair broken war machines

  Overhauled the handling of heroes in taverns, making several improvements

	---> Escaped (retreated/surrendered) heroes may now also appear in external taverns
	---> Escaped/recalled heroes now only temporarily replace heroes in their tavern slot
	---> Escaped and recalled heroes use different slots; you may have 1 of each at a time
	---> Fixed a bug that would sometimes lead to no heroes being available to hire

  Thieves' Guild info is now more limited (top section only) except in external/adventure map taverns

	---> the tavern tip is now always the same on day 1 (reminding players about right-click info)
	---> information for AI-only players (not human playable) is no longer displayed
	---> AI-only teams are also no longer shown on the game setup or scenario info screens

  The "resource" starting bonus is +5 Wood/Ore/rare resource instead of +10 to said rare resource

  Changed the amount of starting gold and resources for AI players on certain settings

	---> AI players now correctly start with the same gold as humans on Normal (5,000 -> 15,000)
	---> AI players now start with more gold on Hard (20,000) and Very Hard (25,000)
	---> AI players now start with 1 of each rare resource on Very Easy instead of 0

  Slightly raised the stats of minor/major/relic artifacts to create a larger divide between tiers

	---> the 10%/15% skill-boosting artifacts now raise attributes by 2/3 instead of just 1

  Several more artifacts now raise knowledge (the hardest stat to boost through artifacts)

	Magician's Hat		(+1 magic/knowledge instead of +2 magic)
	Helm of Chaos		(+1 knowledge instead of magic)
	Crown of the Magi	(+5 magic & +1 knowledge)
	Tunic of the Magus	("")

  The Ebony Cuirass and Basilisk Scale Armor now just raise defense instead of defense and magic

  The Ogre's Club of Havoc & Targe of the Mad Ogre now boost luck instead of the minor dragon artifacts

  The Elixir of Life artifacts now boost health by a percentage instead of a static value

  Statue of Legend (formerly Legion) artifacts changed from growth to damage bonuses

  Changed the special effect of several combination artifacts

	---> Timespinner to SP costs -25% instead of absorbing enemy SP costs
	---> Soulbinder (formerly Magebane) to O-Body/Mind instead of increasing enemy SP costs
	---> Titan's Thunder now has higher stats than it's components (+12 to all), loses O-Mind
	---> Armageddon's Blade no longer subtracts the defense of its components
	---> Dragonlord Armor now reduces all magical damage taken by 25% instead of increasing output

  Raised experience values for artifacts at Rebel Camps

	Lv.1  1500  (was 1000)
	Lv.2  4000  (was 3000)
	Lv.3  7500  (was 6000)
	Lv.4  15000 (was 10000)

  Artifact Traders now buy spell scrolls for gold only and will pay more for higher-level spells

	---> scroll value is based on purchase cost (500/1500/2500), with lv.4-5 scrolls valued at 5000
	---> fixed a bug where the artifact in the second "misc" slot was blocked from being sold

  Spell shrine "not enough gold" rejection messages will now display the spell for sale

  Reduced terrain penalty for Sand from 1.6x to 1.4x

  Elemental terrain now halves the SP costs instead of reducing them to the spell level

  Increased the gold/resource rewards for all creature banks

  Increased the gold from Templar's Grave (formerly "Warrior Tomb") to 4000-6000

  Flotsam to higher odds (+10%) for wood + rare resource and less (-10%) for just wood

  Sirens now permanently increase a hero's water movement by 100 instead of giving extra experience

  Pyramids now contain a random 4th-level artifact instead of gold

  Owned external dwellings now show population on right-click and no longer provide town growth bonuses

  The "split stack" button in town now initiates a trade if a hero is selected (and two are present)

  The "fort" button on the town screen now opens up the town defense (unit comparison) screen

	---> The "buy all units" shortcut has been moved to the now-unused 8th dwelling slot

  Hero skills can now be sorted by left-clicking (no +alt needed) the skill icon in the hero screen

	---> Sorting skills in the hero screen while in a town no longer exits the hero screen

  Converted the "fullscreen" button on the adventure map interface to an (A)rrange Heroes/Towns button

  The "(M)ove Hero" button/shortcut now behaves as "Next (H)ero" if no path set or remaining movement

	---> The "Sleep" (Zzz...) button now removes a hero's movement path instead of disabling them
	---> The "Next (H)ero" shortcut no longer skips heroes who have no movement points remaining

  Repositioned several buttons (Sleep/Dig/Quest Log/View Map/Kingdom Overview) on the adventure map UI

  The middle mouse click no longer has any effect (instead of replaying current player turn)

  Replaced the video quality option in the options screen with a toggle for ambient sound loops

  The unit info combat options no longer affect the display of hero data or damage in the status bar

	---> it is no longer possible to turn off the in-battle hero info display by any means

  Clicking a hero's spell point total in kingdom overview no longer displays an incorrect maximum of 0

  Added a blank line between turns in battle logs for easier reading

  Removed the menu bar from the game window

  Added several new sound effects to the game for...

	...opening treasure chests
	...obtaining gold on the map (as opposed to other resources)
	...purchasing/upgrading units, spells/scrolls, or war machines
	...making deals at marketplaces, black markets/artifact traders, or mercenary guilds
	...entering/exiting the Mage Guild/Blacksmith
	...external blacksmith repairs your broken war machine(s)
	...opening/closing the spellbook
	...aborting/failing a spellcast
	...casting the Clone spell (SFX existed, but never played correctly)
	...completing a quest

  Added text to several adventure map locations that previously did not have any

  Overhauled how animation speed settings are handled in combat (should result in smoother animation)

  Touched up several hero portraits, mostly in Castle, Rampart, & Necropolis

  The colorblind accessibility patch now includes edits for the Rocky Flats terrain overlay

  Added two new maps: Bull's Eye & War of the Magi

	---> Bull's Eye: Medium, target-shaped/maze-style with focus on randomness & external dwellings
	---> War of the Magi: Large, Tower vs. Dungeon vs. Conflux, transport grail to win

  Several major changes to Dragon Quest mostly due to above changes

	---> Player towns can no longer build upgraded dwellings; hill fort required in all cases
	---> Player towns can no longer build base dwellings for Unicorns, Ogres, or Cyclopses
	---> Spells can no longer be purchased from mage guilds; added more scrolls/shrines
	---> Elemental magic skills are now only learnable through quests
	---> Wisdom may be learned by anyone (only Brey starts with it)
	---> Stoneskin is now exclusive to Cristo (he no longer gets Shield)
	---> Cristo now learns Clone (as Surround) instead of Weakness
	---> Nara is now a Witch instead of a Druid (spell specialty: Slow)
	---> Moved the two earliest spell teachers (for Cristo and Nara) further back
	---> Removed all of the skill teachers except those for Sailing and Diplomacy
	---> Moved the first Gem Pond and Crystal Mine from Endor to the Bazaar area
	---> Keeleon, Gabrielle, and Necrasaro are now equipped with First Aid Tents
	---> Keeleon no longer has the Troll's Blood equipped (you still get it for killing him)
	---> Zenithia is no longer guarded by a single Angel (just the event battle prior)
	---> The shopkeeper at Endor now has a proper accent

  Made many changes to other existing maps, some based on above changes

	---> Most unowned towns and garrisons have more/a wider variety of guards
	---> Banned the Fly spell in Desert Storm as in other small maps
	---> Renamed Breakout Island to Adventure Island (to keep it at the top of the list)
	---> Added guards to the second keymaster tents in Adventure Island
	---> Added an external Blacksmith and Black Market to Adventure Island
	---> Add Recall shrines to the player starting zones in Shadow Monopoly
	---> Reworked the starting and third-zone quests in Shadow Monopoly
	---> Added guards to the "be hero" quest huts in Zerg Rush
	---> Added several portal connections between players in Zerg Rush
	---> Kaine (the new Imp specialist) is now Inferno's starting hero in Zerg Rush
	---> Deneb (who now starts with Sailing) is now Fortress's starting hero in Ocean Saga
	---> Swapped Undine (now Conflux's starting hero) and Torrent (now a prisoner) in Ocean Saga
	---> Changed the objective of Ocean Saga to conquer town (Paradise is now locked by the orb)
	---> Rebalanced the cost of quest artifacts in Ocean Saga and The Last Crusade
	---> Changed the difficulty setting of Divided Lands to Normal; lowered obelisk count to 8
	---> The Grail in Lake Orion is now always underground (to keep it in neutral territory)
	---> Minor redesigns to Old World's starting zones; upgraded dirt roads to cobblestone
	---> Fixed improper enemy placement near the surface crystal mine in No Man's Land
	---> Added a prison to World of Ruin
	---> Removed "Allied Maps" folder

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					FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
					------------------

The most obvious omission from the finalized 2.X release of Another Heroes 3 Mod is the campaigns: there
are only standard (single-scenario) maps. This is because I put a great deal of work into every map that
I edit for this hack, and thus the campaigns will be a massive undertaking. A higher priority than the
campaigns are more single-scenario maps, which I will continue to release as I find the time to do so.

Another concern is the random map generator, which is unchanged in AH3M and possesses several flaws that
I would like to address at some point, as well as creating new/better templates. Further, enough changes
have been made to map objects in AH3M to significantly skew the balance of randomly-generated maps. I'm
unsure when I'll end up getting around to this, since the standalone maps will again take precedence.

So far as other changes go, there are a small handful of things that were initially planned for the 2.0
release, but I ran out of gas/time before I could get around to them. These include:

	 Allow player to view experience needed to next level from the Treasure Chest choice box

	 Allow for units with ranged attacks to move to units in range and perform a melee attack

	 Unit info combat option to allow showing enemy unit movement shadow by default (without +Ctrl)

	 Change the "Quest Log" shortcut in the hero screen to a "sort artifact" button

Aside from that, I'd also like to take another pass at the adventure map object message text as well as
look for other conditions still in need of SFX, such as sacrificing units/artifacts or purchasing skills
from a University. Magic Springs are also free to revert to their original function of overfilling spell
points to double the maximum amount since the excess will now just be removed on turn rollover. Finally,
I intend for the Wizard Eye spell to show other treasure objects such as Wagons, hence the unused "point
of interest" map marker. This will all likely be addressed during the inevitable 2.1 bugfix update.

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				    9. CREDITS & CONTACT INFO




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	The single-scenario maps in Another Heroes 3 Mod are based on the following original maps:

			Adventure Island.......Barbarian Breakout
			Bull's Eye.............(original map, loosely inspired by The Five Rings)
			Conflux Rising.........Rebellion
			Dark Alliance..........When Dragons Clash
			Desert Storm...........Sands of Blood
			Divided Lands..........Divided Loyalties
			Dragon Quest...........(original map, conversion of Dragon Quest IV)
			Lake Orion.............Beltway (Heroes 2)
			Monster Hunters........Peaceful Ending
			No Man's Land..........Manifest Destiny
			Ocean Saga.............Thousand Islands
			Old World..............New World (Heroes 1)
			Shadow Monopoly........Shadow Valleys
			The Last Crusade.......A Viking We Shall Go
			Three Kingdoms.........All For One
			War of the Magi........The Battle of Daeyan's Ford
			World of Ruin..........Brave New World
			Zerg Rush..............Dwarven Tunnels

	TESTING	& QA		DEVELOPMENT ASST.	GRAPHICS EDITING	NEW SOUND FX
	------------		-----------------	----------------	------------
	Cross			AlexSpl			Raics			Might & Magic VII
	Deschain		Maurice
	Inuksuk			Phoenix4Ever		UTILITIES		SPECIAL THANKS
	LordCameron		RoseKavalier		---------		--------------
	Makiki			Strigo			Grayface		Serity
	Mattrick_								DanDaCheerman
	Mishrak		    EMAIL: btb@abusemynipples.biz			Cassie <3
	SatlyDoggOh	    DISCORD: http://l.kaffemyers.com/ngpluschat
	Xujhan		    FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/ah3mod/

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	I'm afraid that's all we know, gentlemen.
