Champions are pretty cool - they can level, be equipped in your towns, you can marry one of them, and come with special abilities which are quite nice (merchants and inventors especially right now since only CIV and War are in). Theoretically once Magic is in, they'll also be able to be imbued with essence to cast spells. There are a couple of issues with them I've noticed so far, lets run down the list:
- Recruiting: They don't have an intuitive recruiting cost. I've had merchants ask for anywhere between 74G and 630G, same with inventors. Is there a pricing algorithm at play, or is each recruit cost set individually in the XML?
- Duplication: Multiple copies of the same hero can be spawned into a game. Hello there, don't you look familiar? Yes, I'd be quite happy to hire another merchant!
- Invisibility: They seem invisible to monsters until I hire them, only encountering them when they're in large enough parties to win, at which point naturally they are eaten. Quite tasty I hear...
- Unequipped: Some heroes are wandering the wastes with weapons, until you hire them, at which point they toss their awesome sword away and wait for you to hand them a spear! Some heroes, once hired, have no weapon. Sometimes it has just become unequipped and it is in their inventory, other times, no weapon at all.
For general cleanup, I'd suggest applying some sort of algorithm to determine cost. It just needs to be consistent, so pick one and go - something that's a function of (stats, ability, and turn) might fit.
Naturally, we shouldn't be duplicating the same hero into the game, so an ID check on heroes which have been spawned before spawning a hero is in order.
Monsters should hop heroes as much as they hop them once I've hired them.
Equipment should stay where it is when you hire.
