Overpowered heroes seems to be a popular topic on the message boards.  Hand-in-hand with overpowered heroes is “worthless” common units.

In the current game state, a hero can wipe out an entire squad of soldiers with one swipe of his weapon as long as his damage rating is high enough.  What happens then, is a single hero (or small group) of heroes is able to smash entire armies single-handedly.

Here is a multi-part solution:

1. Track the number of figures in a unit: a hero has 1 unit the base militia has 3 units and so on.
2. Flag weapons or attack types to designate their damage as group or non-group. 
3. An attack that is “non-group” may only damage one figure in the unit.
4. An attack that is “group” damages all figures in the unit.
5. Most hero attacks or weapons will be “non-group” meaning that if a hero is fighting against a squad of 3 spearmen it will take 3 separate attacks to wipe out the squad.
6. Common soldier units will deal “group” damage.

Think about it this way: how does even the mightiest of heroes somehow kill 3, 5, 10, 12 men with 1 swing of his common, unenchanted sword?  He wouldn’t, yet in Enchantress as it currently stands, he does.  If a hero is fighting a unit with 10 men he should have to hit all 10 men to wipe out the unit.  Hitting all 10 men means 10 separate turns for the hero.

By introducing the above element, tactical depth would be added to the game because even weak militia would, at the very least, hold up and hinder powerful melee heroes.

Defaulting common units to “group” damage would make the best way of fighting common units would be to use other common units and the best way to fight heroes would be to fight them with other heroes.

Because heroes would have to wipe out the figures individually, combat would be more dangerous and risky for heroes introducing the need for better planning and balance in army composition.

Some particularly rare and special weapons (or trait) would allow heroes to deal group damage and damage an entire unit with one hit (as per the battle scene with Sauron at the beginning of “The Fellowship of Ring”).

Of course monsters such as Ogres, Dragons, and others would also be able to deal group damage making them particularly dangerous to both heroes and common units.

How practical is this to code?  I would think it would be as “simple” as adding a binary value flag to the attack and creating a “figures” value per unit, but I haven’t coded anything in more than 10 years and I know nothing about “Python” or whatever it is Enchantress is coded in.  I would hope the game engine is robust enough to handle a change like this.  If it is, then it’s just a data issue (data issues suck).