I think heroes should not come automatically, and meaby that there should be a set amount of heroes in the world, Not saying that I agree on the current concept, though I like it to be half the way heroes are recruited, much more important it would be nice to see the eventual reward of a hero from quests, or heroes arising after doing epics battles.

I am not much of a fan of the Tavern approach of the Heroes series, in which you have a special building to lure heroes out of they're caves or whereever they are hiding when not in plain sight .

I liked the part in Master of Magic that sometimes a hero had heard of your empire, and simply travelled into your empire and asked for employment.

I also like the thing that happens in the total war series, (some of those I played), sometimes after major battles, it seemed one of your soldiers proved valuable, honorable and most of all skilled enough to become a general, or said hero.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

How about a building that lets you recruit heroes without physically being next to them. This way it doesn't increase the number of heroes, it just saves you from exploring and travel. It could either reveal them on the map and let you hire them remotely, or give you a list and teleport them to the building once you pay for them.

I think people have forgotten that the AI will kill heroes of the opssoing faction before you can hire them.

I am not sure how Heroes played taverns so I can't comment on that but what I am trying to say is that a great game should not have to be restarted.  What I mean by this is if a game is started and by circumstances out of the players control the game goes sour, like I had a game that I could only recruit two heroes and to be frank, they both sucked.  Their casting ability was very limited if any.  It made for a pain staking but short game.  All that I'm trying to say is that with a building with some choices of champions, a player has better odds of playing with the champions they want to play with or to choose to try something different.  In the end at least the player can have some options in how the game will develop. Once a champion is chosen out of that building the building can go away.  This will keep the same number of champions in play.  Maybe there is a limited amount of champions and I'm sure at this point in the game it will be hard to incorporate with the possible balancing issues that would be associated with having options.  I really like this game so if no change is made I am fine with it.  I am just hoping that enough people like this game so Stardock can continue to make this type of game better in the future.  For all that played MOM, it has been a long time waiting. I'm not ready to go back into deep hibernation again.