New ideas

[Disembow]

Invunerable crates is not smart, I can think of many wonderful uses of them.
Uses:
Allied with an empire you don't like? Plant a crate, unally and you now have an invunerable teleport ability inside their base.
Wanna keep up on Kal? PLANT A CRATE!

I'd go on but you get the message with that one.

[southernhosp]

Hehe i already thought of that thats why i implied by npc only ^^

[rad]

Not exactly an idea, but alot of the models used in HaE classic have to many polys and cause alot of lag.. Im not saying make your own with less, but if possible use one with less. I can handle World of Warcraft in biggest cities lag free but when you get a big city in HaE it will lag. Thats just not cool!

[Sleaker]

as usual the Warcraft 3 engine isn't made to handle the amount of units in a large city, that's why it lags. Not because they are such high poly models.. You can have that many of just about any unit and it will lag...

[FinalLegacy]

not much you can do about that :/ maybe making another empire?

[silentpartner]

The lag in HaE1 is not model related. If u play GoE (genesis of empires) it uses the same models and similar town layout. I've made cities far larger in GoE than in HaE and ialmost never lag in GoE. But in HaE my comp goes haywire after about 50 houses.

Thier are two reasons for the lag /server split issues as far as i can tell.

1: Poor map optimiztation.
2: The high frequency of gold income(pop check and calculations etc.) Its every 6 seconds in HaE1 vs every 90 secs in GoE.

Of course its also true any game will lag if u make enough units. Even GoE lags when u get up to 250 or so houses. and 300 military units.

[FinalLegacy]

well whatever causes the lag, it will be reduced in HaE2

[FinalLegacy]

well Southernhosp, we went through your ideas
dont really follow the first one btw, but most of your ideas are already in HaE2 or even already in HaE1
one idea seems quite nice tho; the empire trading idea
but i would do it more like -trade goldforlumber <color> <amount> or -trade lumberforgold <color> <amount>
first things first tho. we'll probably add this idea later, thx for posting

[Disembow]

Legacy/Squad read my post about an idea i had, I believe I posted it in the Quest/Conversion area but it applies here as well.

[Disembow]

Nifty idea that came to me:

Dual empiring.

Now I admit it sounds weird, but the idea sprang up after a horrible game where I got stomped by mass computer armies on my hero, loosing all my lives trying to protect the empires. (Sadly most of them were newbs and we lost, even after the remaining 4 pros "all my friends" worked together)
After my hero fell, my friend's empire shared control with me and we set about dual-tasking things.

My idea is simple in aspect, but complicated in implimentation. At the first minute or two of a game, give players a special option to allow Empire merging. Basically, let's say we have players Red, Blue, and Green. Player Red types in -Merge Blue and both Red and Blue are empires. Blue is presented with a dialogue claiming "Red wishes to merge his empire with yours and split control, do you accept?" After accepted, Red's empire units would vanish and Blue's empire would automatically give Red full access to it. Gold/Lumber would be shared, even the empire screen. This would allow two great players to split an empire and make it twice as efficient, managing tasks much faster than one, yet also making it fair by giving everyone a chance to do so. This would also help shrink the numbers of empires to defend, or even be used as a "Tutorial" mode for teaching people how to manage an empire.

To give you an example of the tutor aspect of this, let's say you have Red (Pro) and a new empire person (We'll call him Pink). Pink's not sure how to build, so Red says "Alright, let me help you" and types -Merge Pink. Pink's empire remains, Red's vanishes, and Red can now teach Pink how to setup and manage an empire, then release control to him slowly as Pink learns.

The only drawback I can see to this (two actually) is that later on you might not wish to continue to share control, and might wish to revoke it. This would pretty much shaft the merged person. Secondly, the sheer logistics behind making this happen could be an issue.

[FinalLegacy]

its also possible to be with many empires and form one huge empire by closing and defending all the entrances from the enemy spawn points, like that its easy to control 1/4th of the entire map. besides, you'd require alot of teamwork to make one empire, especially when ur with a noob

[twilightemplar]

The -share command does a decent job in the control respect... and if you wanted to merge you could simply -share and have 1 player give the other all his resources. It wouldn't require new commands... although I really don't see why you would need to merge, excluding in some player versus player games... 2 back to back empires can handle pretty much anything, especially with the help of a hero (in the original map), and -share allows you to help a new empire set up their base if they do not understand the game.

[LordSquad]

On the lagg, The most lagg in hae is caused by the large amount of spawns (GoE has none). Also the AI (goe has none) increases lagg alot. If i would remove those it would be alot less cpu intensive but i simple can't.

HaE2 will have a slightly better system then 1 in that case.

Ow 1 more thing, the empires look like they lagg because they eat a bunch of CPU (like they do in GoE) but it's way more noticeable because the other stuff is eating away your cpu already.

[ScytaleIRAx]

well that whole idea reminds me of the SC mode, which was a personal favorite. if it can be done, PLEASE DO SO!!!

and really, all it would take is splitting the income command so that the two players that join forces get their income added together and divided. give both emps shared unit control, have the two players build together, but with each still owning his own units/buildings. this would lead to a very interesting change of things in that while one person may have all the houses under his control working in commerce, the other has all of theirs working in science. this way, the commercial empire is supplying both with money, and the science one is payed for by this.

my only questions would be
- is research cost shared(if u research something is it done for both players?)
-would food be shared?
-would lumber harvesting be shared
-would there be a way to make fire departments work right?
-and dont forget about municipal buildings--will they affect your ally?

if those 5 questions can be answered, and the 'splitting' of resources and such can be done, then it would not be as complex as it would be time consuming to write in.

of all the new ideas for HaE2, this sounds like the absolute most awesome and delicious. it requires a new word... awescralicious.

[FinalLegacy]

well we havent made any work of that yet, but wouldnt it be kinda impossible to share money?...