Do harder world difficulties also cause more monsters to spawn? If so that would make it significantly easier to climb the experience ladder because you have a larger base of weak monsters to kill before you have to face up to tougher monsters to continue gaining experience.

Higher world difficulty monsters should not give more xp.  I also believe one way to alleviate the disparity between champions and trained units would be to give trained units more, if not full, xp per kill. 

Trained units already get so little from leveling up compared to heroes, why give them so little xp as well?

You may have something there.  I am 100% for having constant xpt across all difficulties.  If nothing else, it will make balancing easier, because we'll all be speaking about heroes in the same level range.

I also agree that trained units could get a bit more from leveling... just one point of attack and one point of dodge would go a looong way.

Well played sir. 

Whichever it is, heroes need to be brought down, so that trained units can shine.  To much work has gone into cities and units to make using heroes so much more effective than anything else.

How people use it is important, but this is something that may be an issue for the devs to balance for. 

Yes, absolutely.  Not a hard cap, because these are disheartening, but if all levels above 15 took A LOT longer, it would be only for the better.

I believe that we need a double penalty, actually.

1. The total experience gets reduced for every additional hero. (Because the fight was made much easier)

2. The remaining experience gets split between heroes proportionally by level.   (Because the young guys did not do as much, they should not get as much)

I'm thinking level 10, but then, I'm inherently vicious.

Ok, to break your theory I will become vocal about heroes dominance.

I have so far played only on normal difficulty and have used only heroes and pioneers in real games (ie not the first 3 aborted half hour games to learn it). I stoped making exploerers after the first game as they always died to monsters and never actualy explored anything, I stoped making troops as they were never anything like my heros, took forever and took away from building real stuff in cities. Heros could always do it better.

Even when I decide to end the game and kill the AIs it has always been with my super friends: The sov, whatever champs I have gotten and their associates - found monsters/troops, summons, my dog. Nothing built in a city by me, I really dont need cities but for some mana I guess, not even really the shop.

I was annoyed at the end of my last pre .98 game as the baddy AI had so many troops it took 3 or 4 turns to bust thru em all to get to the cities. 2 stacks dead a turn for atleast 3 turns, plus some leftovers on the next turn.  Literally took no losses at all, all the supa friends survived, then went and took his empire, again no losess apart from an ice elemental, who was back straight away, as thouhg he had never died. 

I now playing .98 at challenging, it doesnt seem any different. THe same strats are working just fine for me. Of course this may change as more playthru occur but nothing is screaming at me to change styles.

I dont think the problem is heros level or experience, the problem is the incredibly slow research. I do use troops when I get them free, I got a nice pancea (sp ???) archers once. They were quite good fire support for my heroes, I would build my own but I have never actually researched a bow in the game. It doesnt last long enough.

Similiarly when I see the 2nd size groups of troops it is much harder to kill them. I imagine having the next level would be alot harder again and company level or whatever its called with some magic kit or ranged attacks would be quite good at stopping my heros cold.

I have never got past the 2nd size group of troops (never built it either) and have never fought bigger then this from the AI. Again it takes way too long to get to.

Maybe give the enemies extra attack rather than extra hitpoints at higher difficulties?  So World Difficulty for Monsters and Ruffians and AI player difficulty for AI players, could be +5%/+10%/+15%/+20% Attack for Hard/Expert/Ridiculous/Insane respectively.  That means they would do more damage in a shorter time, but aren't just hit sinks.  And in a way, slightly greater attack is easier to believe than double or triple hitpoints (you need to give a proportionally greater extra hitpoints to make any difference than you would need to if you just increased attack).

Well, there is yet to be seen how the balance changes in v0.98 pan out. I am going to try it now and see.

@taltamir @leroy105 I didn't mean to imply there isn't a problem with heroes on normal. There certainly is a problem with heroes outshining military units on normal in act 1 (exploration+cleansing). I only posted the "symptom" because it was something I noticed and something that got me thinking about what might cause it - background to the theory.

The result of my theory (if correct) is that you might see level 6 heroes at a certain point in a normal game, and they may be level 9 or 10 in an insane game at the same point. Hero levels essentially follow an exponential curve because additional levels allow you to clear new content and wear new gear which allows you to get even more experience.

This would make the game incredibly difficult to balance for the devs because (if I am right) they would have no idea where the hero actually is in terms of power at a certain point in the game. There will always be variation in a highly random game like this, but the theory presents a factor they may not have accounted for and which breaks levels to outside their "allowed" range.

I have always complained that level 4 and level 5 spellbook traits come too early in the game. Those Fire and Earth elementals kill anything the enemy factions can throw at me. A Focus+Flamedart kills most champions. But why?

1) Is it because those spells are overpowered?

2) Is it because I abuse a mechanic to gain sudden advantage and strike just before they can do the same?

and/or

3) Is it because I play on high difficulties and gain more experience and therefore more levels and therefore gain the spells earlier than is intended? Earlier than other human players that may be playing on lower difficulties?

I don't actually use summons or direct damage spells. I use magic to buff sov with spells and in combat i rarely use any buffs other then the occasional haste.

My super sovs are meleers.

The issue I am having is that I just can't get up the tech tree... research is too slow, especially on military tech.