Mega champs for me too, like the well-equiped champions in MoM.

Heh, Artificer/Alchemist was my favorite build. Turn the gold in to mana, and the mana into WMDs for my heroes. Combined with Sorcery for access to Invisibility/Flight enchants it got stupid fast.

In my current limited experience, I would say that one mega champ isn't bad, but a few of them quickly obsoletes armies entirely. Just one can be swarmed and brought low by a few enemies, but the overall amount of damage they deal out in groups, particularly when they get ranged attacks, (basic spells and throwing daggers can come in quite early) gets out of hand.

The best use I've found for troops is as armor for my champs. The AI favors raw damage over meaningful damage, and will happily hit a unit of troops for 16 (at which point I run them away to avoid losing them) rather than put 8 on the hero who is actually threatening them. Fast troops flanking my champ can basically allow her to ignore the first three turns of damage from large enemies (champs and trolls, giant spiders, etc), and if I do it right, I don't lose anyone, as the AI favors targets it can reach in one turn over those that would require additional movement. At no point does it try to close with my Sov who is blasting away with fireballs.

@stupidty10 .... Is there something that can be done about posts that copy and paste information from other posts with intent of hijacking threads? This is getting on my nerves.

And sorry, off-topic.

If you base hero level with technology level then the ammount of time it takes to research that technology needs to be similar to the time it takes to level the champion. I'm not completely certain that this is viable, and would require extensive tweaking, as well as impose a random element related to the proximity of appropriately challenging monsters.

I'm curious to see how things will play out with shared xp. Mind you this doesn't slow or stop the single champion/sovereign strategy in any way, but it might not be as viable with a caster.. meaning item balance could resolve this. Still, it might be necessary to tie technology to maximum hero level (or gear)

To answer the specific question; How strong should they be:

If they have split xp while in a group: As powerful as a 1-2 appropriately leveled units with equal gear.

If they have soloed the xp: As powerful as 8-10 appropriately leveled units with equal gear (I'm aware the army limit is 9).

I like mega-champs. If you earn them and other options are at least roughly comparable (there should still be dangerous stuff / possibly enemies that do direct damage ect. similar if not as overpowered as the 3*Strength (In WoM there were 3 different abilities that did that I believe. Crushing blow being one of them) in direct damage from WoM... Which was immensely threatening to most stuff back then.)
Progression / Split-XP ect. (plenty of suggestions exist) might all have to be tested to find a good mark but the existing system is fun allready (if not balanced right yet..). Please don't kill a fun system with balancing it to death. balance it so other things get viable. (also possible by buffing up other options, including the monsters...)

Armies should be viable either though (possibly with a bonus vs. single oponents (simmilar to the overpower trait for singles / Magic vs. Armies) or the above suggestion). Easier acess to equip might help (spears + leather squads are viable though. Tested that and yielded good results at least with a Sov and Traits dedicated to building armies... Think the tech-pace is to slow for higher level equippment... Pacing on hero-advancement compared to army advancement does seem off to me...)
Maybe consolidating the warfare-techs into less techs with more equip (like gear for all base weapons and leather armor ect...) while keeping the current cost for the tech-level (essentially halving the tech-cost for weapons and armor...). Makes the game a bit shorter. (need not be a bad thing)
But the adventure path already is far cheaper to complete (including the thing for Level 5 quests) in the magics-branch compared to even mid-level equipment (the stuff past leather / base Weapons), so something about that is way off... (given that in the adventure tree cap there is a quest which gives access to legendary equipment! Which is way better than anything gained even from mid-level armor- and weapons techs...)

After testing magical heroes I can say they are on par with melee if you got enough shards (which seems alright, magic density of shards should influence power of magical heroes alright.).

So armies seems to be the missing component in overall balance...

Also the jump from weak champion to all-powerful champion seems to happen to fast imo... Stretching out the progression in some sensible way not sucking out the fun might help (seems also to be related to equipment, maybe a bit to random and very powerful stuff dropping to often / from to easy monsters / to early-level chests and way to much in abundance ect...)

I don't like the mega-champ design at all. But the problem is that if you make them weaker they can't go questing, and if you make trained armies stronger you don't need champs anymore (except as a token dude that makes it possible to enter quest tiles).

I think questing and warfare needs to be more separated, but I'm not sure how to accomplish that.

This could be a good idea.

I don't think Champs should be gods, and this really turns me off. Champs really should be important for the moral and benefit of a larger army. But then again I'm thinking about strategy games that are far better than this game. I think the only ways champs can be worthwhile is if the entire Tactical Battles system is completely and utterly redesigned from the ground up. So far it was always something of a back-seat to the world building portion of Elemental. Now that the World Building portion has proven itself to be a total failure (War of Magic) - the Warfare/Tactical element should be the main focus of the game's designers right now. Remodeling units, animations, landscape, map size, use of terrain, spells that are actually meaningful, army units that are actually meaningful.. etc..  Heck games 15 years ago got it right, no idea what StarDock is having so much trouble with this.

OrleanKnight is right, units of troops need to be redesigned. It's really starting to worry me how many basic mistakes are being repeated from WOM.

Please Don't be lazy or unambitious! Use us beta testers to our full potential and experiment!

*Ya I know it's still early Beta*

I don't think things are as dire as you imply.

The city building and unit customization are still very fun.  Yes, they could use some work, but I don't think the systems have to be scrapped.

The problem is just that champions are OP.  This isn't something that can't be fixed.  Champions just need to get some major nerfs so that the other parts of the game can shine.

Right now champions are OP and Boring

Classes & Talents

Champion classes beyond the warrior and mage are horrible simply because the game is so simple. You cant specialize a warrior at all, a lv 15 warrior is exactly the same as any other and the stats system make Assassins pointless because theres nothing to specialize in. Defenders be useless becuase defense is pointless in a game where  you exchange like 2 blows of 60 dmg(Also see tactics above). The Assassin specialization is pointless because they tried to make them specialize in dext, which is just as useless as int. Crit strike is flawed if warriors are defined by only their strength stat and weapons deal dmg based on strength. Talents needs to be made more complex to even allow the classes we have. The Simplest way to revive fun champions is weapon specialization talents. For Example daggers as they stand just suck, but how about a talent that lets Assassins always strike twice with daggers? Or a Talent that gives Assassins a Dext based dmg bonus when using a bow? This fixes Assasins and makes champions more interesting. Defenders could get an improved defend talent for shields or a multi turn resistible stun for maces. There should be multiple abilities for every weapon and class in the game.

Units and Monsters

There are multiple types of dmg in FE, why are they never used beyond champion armor? Rock Spiders should laugh at cutting weapons. Cavalry should be afraid of whatever it is spears do. Also higher lv spears would be nice. There should be units in the game that are almost impossible to kill unless you have their weakness, be it fire or hammers. Instead every unit and monster in the game is just X hp, X dmg, X Init with a face. If it's got four legs it's fast and if it's got eight it's poisonous.

Unit stacks are underpowered again due to their simplicity, their just normal units with a weakness. The interaction between monsters, champions and stacks should be made more interesting. Unless using a special ability or talent, champions or monsters shouldn't be able to kill more than 1 unit in a stack per turn. Inversely their should be a limit to how many guys in a stack can attack, maybe just the front row (Unless they have spears? or a Spearwall talent?). Just think about how much this actually adds to the game. It makes initiative more important if you want to kill stacks or strength more important to kill monsters. Plus abilities for warrior champions would become more specialized, allowing you to build warrior champions more than just one way. Sword/Shield Duelist to fight other champions? GreatSword wielding monster slayer? Mace wielding stack slaughterer?

well the problem is most ppl refer to mom as balanced

mom was not even  remotely balanced, in fact champs in mom were so much op to hurt much more than ACTUAL FE

not champions per se, but champions with the create artifact that allowed to create immortal 1 shoting champs on demand, also create champions to get the strongest

i think they need nerf but they have to be strong, able to kill any troop solo no problem BUT able to die against a strong army or party of beasts or those huge dragons/demons etc

tbh thats a problem

in fact the strongest traits to buff champions are THOSE buffing armies, cause they buff both and work on each other

and making them only on troops is really bad design imo

like i told many times the only way to make champions less op is forcing them to split and not by a code allowing only 1 in battle or similar, just by strategic needs

i dont really see why

i mean, there could be A champ making armies stronger

but they can also be fighters and stop

or mages or anything to work solo

they are CHAMPIONS not generals

That sounds all right to me, as long as there are more than 2 options for hero development; melee champion and archmage (or 4 if you really want to stretch it, with ranged warrior and 'just tagging along for the xp'-governor being the other options).

The guy you describe is your standard tank; capable of engaging and surviving a battle with a trained unit that is level appropriate. But he shouldn't be able to quickly dispatch of these guys, and not without taking some damage himself. And if he's engaged by several units he should be in a lot of trouble.

The archmage hero should be in the back of the field, buffing, debuffing, and casting direct damage spells. He should be kept out of melee combat, as he won't survive for long in it.

You could have a hybrid, the battle mage. But this should come at the expense of casting power or spell diversity, and some combat power. This guy is in the frontlines doing direct damage or debuffs, either killing units outright or letting other units finish them off easily. But in single combat without any spells this guy wouldn't be as good as the tank above.

(A Sauron type hero, both powerful in spellcasting and in combat, should be possible. But only once in a while, not every hero should become this powerful or the fun will soon wear off.)

Assassin type heroes could be specialised in taking out single targets, sneaking up on the archmage or stabbing the tank in the back. Or they could be specialised in taking out groups of troops quickly. Imagine a Witcher-type hero running up to a group of soldiers, throwing a smoke bomb to hide his approach, knocking some troops down with a magic sign, cutting down those left standing in a few swooping motions with his greatsword, and then quickly retreating before nearby troops have time to react.
In either case, this type of hero should not stay around and fight troops in straight combat. And if the attack fails he should be in BIG trouble, so you'd better have some way of bailing him out.