Lords of Magic - The Supreme RPG Experience

Choose your Leader type to embark on your quest...

major edit: after like a year of not wc3 mapping im back and this map is being restarted.
it wont be exactly the same, but alot of the things below will be in the new map.

Overview:
Eight faiths of magic, representing all "flavors" of magic and their opposites. Players choose either a Theif, Mage, or Warrior hero to embark on their quest and then pick one of the magics: Life, Earth, Chaos, Air, Water, Death, Order or Fire. Gameplay takes place mainly on Overland view, where players' units are represented by the leader of each Party which traverses the landscape. Battles take place on a life-size area, instead of the Overland veiw, which gives parties the opportunity to retreat or parlay should they meet on the Overland area.

Party System:
Parties consist of up to 3 Champions each with a retinue of up to 3 units, for a total of 12 units in a Party. Parties can be combined and split at will, however not more than 3 Champions and 9 (three per Champion) retinue units may fight in Dungeon view together. Experience is shared equally in a party, however retinue units inherently gain experience 25% slower than Champions. Most units gain experience, with the exception of Summoned magical armies and most Legendary Creatures.

Strongholds:
Each faith has a Stronghold, with accompanying Mage Tower, Barracks, and Thieves Guild. Seperated by distance is a Great Temple for each faith, in which the owners of each may find some of their most powerfull creatures or enchantments. Various caves/caverns/dungeons/forts/tower/etc may be found across the landscape, inhabited by various foul denizens which players may fight for experience/loot or both.

Marauding Parties:
Marauding parties also wander the landscape, preying on parties of adventurers that they deem weak enough to safely attack. Marauding parties can also be the result of a Lord failing to pay mercenaries or soldiers with the result of the said mercenaries/soldiers turning to banditry.

Troops:
Mage, Warrior, and Thief Champions may be trained at the Mage Tower, Barracks, and Theives guild, respectivly. Magical creatures may be summoned at the mage tower, and scouting creatures at the theives tower, while the barracks may build ships. Champions resting in their respective buildings may impart a portion of their experience unto new recruits hired/trained at that building, with the amount imprinted on the building relative to the level of the building. Champion Lords (each players embodyment in the game world) can reach level 12, while other hired champions may reach level 10 as a maximum. Non-champion units have different maximum levels, with 5 being a common maximum. Some hired non-magical units do not gain experience, such as ships and scout units.

Resources:
Resources consist of: Gold, Ale, Crystals, and as sometimes, Fame. Resources may be aquired through battling, by bartering with other players or Marauding parties, or by capturing production buildings. Gold mines produce gold, Breweries produce Ale, Crystal mines produce Crystal, and Statues contribute +1 fame per day. Every single unit, except those that you start the game with, require an upkeep cost of gold/ale/crystal or a combination of them.

Followers:
Hiring units requires 1 follower per unit in addition to other resource costs. Followers are, in a nutshell, pesants of your realm. You may assign followers to the 4 city buildings in your capital. Assigning followers to the Market produces gold, Tavern produces ale, Temple yelds crystals, while Magistrate improves Fame. Units hired from the Barracks will normaly require more Ale as an initial cost, and as their upkeep cost. Units hired at the Thieves Guild will normally take Gold from your coffers, while creatures summoned from the mage tower will normally require Crystal to aquire and maintain.

Upkeep Costs:
Upkeep costs are paid at 7:00 AM each day. Days last 360 seconds (or 15 second per hour) each, ingame, and your journy starts just after upkeep costs are paid. Income is recieved at 6:00 AM, one hour (or 15 real-time seconds) before upkeep must be paid. Every 7 days, those faiths that control both their Stronghold, and their Great Temple, and have upgraded their Stronghold to at least level 1, will draw more followers to them, allowing for the training of more army units or production of more resources.

Beginning Play and Great Temples:
Each faith starts with no spells, a very small army, few resources, and an unimproved capital. All the Great Temples in the land have fallen under soem mysterious darkness, and the faithfull worshippers have been forced out of their holy sites by various bands of evil creatures. Players must strive to liberate their repective Great Temples in order to progress to any great degree. Once the Great Temple is restored, that player will be able to upgrade their Stronghold to allow production of resources within the capital, the training of units, and various other things. Players may liberate the Great Temples of other Faiths which will result in a choice for the liberated temple's faith: either to swear fealty completely, and leave the game, or to be left with just that player's Champion Lord and any remaining "starter" units (ones the player entered the game with).

Some technical info about the map:

Advanced bartering/trading system, players may trade resources, items, units, even the control of buildings and the knowledge of spells.

(hopefully) lots of actual icons/images from the Lords of Magic game by Impressions Studios and Sierra.

(Lords of Magic uses the .mpq file format for most of its data, but id appreciate it if someone was able to send me a listfile for the .mpq files that are in that game, as my WinMPQ can read the files but cant tell wtf the files are, thanks.)

More to come!

I hate large maps. They take 8 minutes to load and half the players on shitty rigs lag out.

All those abilities and doodads can really kill a game before it even starts.

My point is that you should think about doing more with less space rather than just making everything bigger. The lowest common denominator is king when it comes to making good use of CPU power.

Some of the things you can do to make a small map seem larger is reducing sight radius, making movement slower, shortening weapon ranges and making units smaller.

alright in response to th15's comment....ive done some terrain reshuffling, map size is down to 256x256. about your other things....: abilities take negligible amount of time to load, same with most stuff except terrain and doodads, and doodads are relatively scarce in my map. basicly the whole thing is explorable, i dont have "lanes" that are enclosed by solid forest BUT units will move faster on roads than on other types of terrain, as well as having combat stuff influenced by terrain type.

warning: thread necromancy! im back on the wc3 modding scene after a year of inaction, this thing is getting restarted.