Not embarking Heroes on ports no longer works

[Chazar]

Well, taken for granted that heroes may ride on flyers, sea creatures and boats, I do not see a way to make it simpler.

However, allowing a hero to jump onto a ship from a bridge but not from a more convenient port is certainly not intuitive. Allow heroes to "ride" with a boat from ports again - much more consistent!

[KGB]

A hero that moves to a dock with (or where there already is) a flyer or seacreature does not have to convert to a ship, but can stay in Land-mode if he so whishes.

This is definitely not true right now. In a game I moved my hero to a port where 2 Sea Serpents were waiting. My hero auto converted to a boat and went from 14 moves to 2. There was no way to ride on the Serpents from the port. I must find a swamp/city to get on the Serpents.

This means that for a hero to stay in Land mode and catch a ride with a boat he needs to either jump on the boat from a bridge, or come via seacreature or flyer.

However, allowing a hero to jump onto a ship from a bridge but not from a more convenient port is certainly not intuitive. Allow heroes to "ride" with a boat from ports again - much more consistent!

I agree with Chazar. That's very confusing. I had no idea you could board boats from bridges with a hero. Can I also board a Sea unit from a bridge with my hero?


The whole logic of heroes and their mounts is getting really complex and hard. It would be very nice to find a simple way to allow heroes to switch mounts (and modes) any where on any square. So for instance a hero could board a boat and travel in boat mode and meet up with a Flier (or Sea Unit) and switch from boat to land mode on any square. Or convert the other way (from land to boat mode) on any square. That's ultimately want is needed. Then you don't have to worry about port logic or bridge logic etc.

KGB

[Chazar]

The current system is actually quite simple:
A hero can move/ride along with any other stacked unit, provided that unit can move onto the target sequare (the only exceptions being crows and elementals onto lava).

The problem is joining heroes with sea creatures or boats, who have to find a common square to stack, but there are plenty of choices: city, temple, bridge, swamp, ford. Simply all terrains both can move onto somehow.

The whole logic of heroes and their mounts is getting really complex and hard. It would be very nice to find a simple way to allow heroes to switch mounts (and modes) any where on any square.

...but they already can switch anywhere, unless the hero is in boat.

I had no idea you could board boats from bridges with a hero. Can I also board a Sea unit from a bridge with my hero?

Yes. Any square they can both move onto will do; it is that simpel actually! You can also use a flyer to carry a hero to a serpent at sea.

However, I see one possible simplification for maritime movement:
Do not allow heroes to embark at ports at all!

It is very rarely a good idea to put a hero in a boat, since the disembarkation time almost always outweighs the increased movement points. So prevent player from doing this common mistake by disallowing heroes to become their own boat. The only disadvantage would be that heroes no longer can sail away on their own, but that a hero needs any other unit (except crow) to accompany him across water - that is not a big loss! (I would also guess that it would make the drowning code much easier to implement: at the beginning of the turn, check for all heroes whether they are in 1) a single stack 2) on water 3) have 0 points in divine movement. If yes to all three, they drown.)


And one more change to increase the complexity of maritime movement: don't allow fire elementals into boats. No good captain would be so insane to allow that!

[Experix]

I agree that once the hero is allowed to disembark provided that there are some other ships in the port, it would be pretty simple. The hero either has to meet on some spot with its mount or goes by ship just as any other unit.
But I don't agree with disallowing heroes to embark the boat. If the hero is not barbarian, I want to have the hero in ship in at least 90% of cases. I would use it only in a rare case that I want to transport my hero to some other, not very distant place, different from the entire ship stack or if I want to group him with some swimmers or fliers early to make some attack from the sea. Usually I just need to transport the full stack somewhere (and the move points lowered from some 22 to 14 really slow this process and make the more expensive ships useless if I don't expect to fight), or I want strong , highly mobile stack on water (something with 14 movepoints is quite useless with non-hero stacks and serpents having 22). Also the fact that the hero is an only unit which can't just go by boat on his own is not intuitive for me.
And I don't understand why should the hero drown - the hero doesn't die in mountains if he is left there alone; and if left alone stuck on water, it's very easy to kill him.