Advice for Two Maps

I am making two maps, and I'd like a bit of advice for each.

1. I'm making a map where the players are vampires, and they can turn into 'bats' for one of their skills. I want the vampires to be Heroes, so they can gain levels and skills and so forth. In the original Warcraft 3, I could have used the prophet as a template, since he could turn into the Crow, but he is no longer considered a Hero. So as of now, I see two possible options...

a. Change Metamorphosis so that it changes you into a flying creature, and change it to be a level 1 spell (though when I click the abilities editor, WC3 crashes..)

b. Have the player's characters be non-heroes, and use the Druid of the Claw as templates.

Are there any other options? Is there any way to fix the WC3 editor so it won't crash when I try to edit spells, or will I have to bust out the notepad?

2. The second map that I am making has players who are each a 'tribe'. Every day you have to gather a certain amount of food (through killing animals or harvesting plants) that feeds your units (if you don't have an amount of food equal to or greater than your number of units at the end of the day, a random unit of yours dies). Naturally each player will have probably less than twelve units total, but beyond this general design for acquiring food, and a few other things to spice up the map, it will just be tribes combating tribes. I'd like for there to be some sort of computer threat you could combat, but not just mobs standing around, and I think that a computer player would just be bland. Any suggestions to spice things up, or do you have anything that could fit here that's not fit into any of your maps? I will give due credit, of course...

Thanks to you all...

Imbrifer
First there was Drawing;
Then there was Scuplture;
Thirdly there were Plays and Films
And now there is moving, interactive 3D art.

I was bored and had a few minutes so I made a quick vampire hero with a few abilities including: Bat form, based off of Storm, earth, fire and mist form based off of metamorphosis. Anyway, hopefully it will help :D

LD

Bear Form and Crow Form are both perfectly good alternatives; I based Fly and Land off of Bear Form for my heroes, and they work fine. The key is to create hero units for both walking and flying forms of the hero, and give them both the same hero skills. That way, no skill levels are lost in morphing.

Wow, in all my days of forum going, I have never recieved such swift and useful responses... Thank you both a ton!

Why don't you try something like a granary with storage. So you could always get more food during a time of plenty, and when there's drought, or snow, or an disaster that makes your food source go little, you have to rely on the food you have stored away.

Have a few different types of food producers, some can work in all weather, some only in certain weather, climate. An example is a field/farm. It would work fine in spring-autumn, but in winter, you'd get squat from it. On the other hand you could have winter crops that require the cold, strawberries come to mind (most berries I believe). Don't forget stuff like fishing, whaling and seal-hunting for water based.

Build up a style of play that allows interaction between players both computer and user. AoE's (and a lot of other games') market system of getting resource from trade is good. There's quite a few posts on it in the Map Dev forum.

Make multiple ways to win the game. Eliminate all enemies, research all upgrades (think of getting to space age?), build a wonder, yup there's quite a bit to think of.

I would consider using setbacks to compliment your hostile enemies. Stuff like meteor showers and earthquakes would be rather impeding to the growth of a nation.

I'm thinking quite a big map, such that you would have a large growth scale, yet you should run into a lot of neutral hostiles and passives in the form of other tribes.

Cheers~