"You should be able to kill champions who are wandering around in the wilderness..."

I was extremely confused by that, because there was a champion near one of my cities who said "Looks like (this city) is ripe for the taking!", so I killed him.  Then I got a screen accusing me of being a murderer, which didn't improve my relations with other factions.

On another point, I just simply think of the champions that have a high intelligence to be the "naturally gifted" channeller (I've seen an 18 starting INT), but yeah they shouldn't start with it since that's the lore.

 

I like the idea of being able to select how a hero levels up.  If I want a merchant master to just keep getting better at adding gildars that would be great.  His fighting ability is irrelevant, in fact, it would become more important to protect him after while.  You could also concentrate your fighting "hero" on the traits you need.

I do not like the "hero" that is a channeler.  They would have started their own kingdom or empire, making them one of the sovereigns.

 

IMO, hero professions needs to describe a larger range of skills than just the one or two they get. The game doesn't even need to tell us what they're profession is, so long as it's internally organizing them and giving them new abilities.

I think every champion should have at least two versions of their skill. One for when you hire them, and one they attain at higher level so they stay competitive later on.

They also need to get combat stats as part of their level raises. That will help counter the expensive equipment and bring them in line with produced troops.

Lastly, the mechanic for a champion supporting your city needs to be more interesting. Their stats and special abilities should impact a lot of city attributes, like prestige, production, reproduction and other things.

When heroes can't heal, can't teleport, and need ~300 gildar at least to be combat effective, they end up not getting used. Even a kick ass hero will eventually have their HP whittled down in the field, which means they're only best suited to city defense so they can get HP back.

Some of the adventurer champions are quite strong with stats in the 15-19ies at level 1 and fair gear like leather armor and same-tier weapons. If you can recruit one of these champions in the first 40 turns you can easily take out most other sovereigns.
Even if you don't go on a conquering spree the champion should pay itself by killing monsters and in the long-term it should be your largest income source.

One of the ideas I like most about Champions that I've seen mentioned in the forum is to have a skill tree available when they level. Allowing a leveling Champion skills in combat, damage resistance, attack damage, army leadership, magical skill or even 'specialist' skills would be a great way to make Champions unique and increasingly useful. I've also seen mention that when Champions increase in level, their hit points automatically go up by a fixed amount in addition to the point or points that you are allowed to spend on their attributes. I like that idea as well.

However, the skill tree is a awesome suggestion.

 

I agree with original poster on everything with the exception on having champions with magic abilities which is totally against the lore of the game.

Having a standard equipment that costs 5-6 times more for champions really makes no sense. It's also a main reason why you can't use them in battle. First off, they cost a lot to hire and you can't use them in combat since they cost ridiculous amounts of money to equip them to the same level as the common soldier only to have them killed easily in combat. ATM, you hire them for special benefits, don't equip them at all and park them in a city where they act as some sort of small city buff. You sometimes do use them to get some notable locations or quests but even then you run a risk of losing them as single champion can't really deal with 3 wolves on level 1 quest on his own so you need to babysit them with troops while they are at it.

Having equipment at the SAME price as soldiers do is good idea (and it makes much more sense). That way a hero can at least be able to use gear normal soldiers do. Having some equipment that is more expensive and available only to heroes is also a good idea as that will allow them to be what they should be -  champions, and champions are usually made in battle (not farming and adding 20% to food production).

I'd suggest adding some randomly available gear with additional traits that would add like +1 or more to damage weapons, +1 or more to armor bonus, more combat speed bonuses and such. Attributes like Heavy, Treated, Strong, Masterwork, Sharp, Balanced, etc. That would be randomly be applied to the standard weapons, each of them adding a certain bonus to normal attributes (for example, Balanced adding 0.50 combat speed to the normal weapon stats or Heavy adding +2 to damage and -0.25 to combat speed, etc.). Have such weapons appear randomly at the shops at increased prices for heroes to use. Such stats would not unbalance the game too much since the bonuses are not high, but it would allow heroes to get some edge over common soldiers in combat. Of course, equipping a hero with such better gear would be significantly more expensive so it would be something to consider - do I buy a very expensive gear and risk it all lost in battle or do I get a weaker and safer option?

I think this would work.

Except in combat, strength modifies weapon damage to arrive at attack value. So you still need weapons, and decent weapons are really expensive if you're expanding.

And every heroes ability to deal is limited by the fact that if they fight, they lose HP and have to retreat. Not until you get medic packs can you really send champions out into the world to adventure and not have to baby sit/return them home at the first sign of real trouble. They should be a lot stronger than that, without needing to spend 1,500 gildar. You need great armor eventually took, as attack ranges EXPLODE in the 2 to 3 level range, and a full damage hit can turn your 25+ hp hero into a pile of bones.

And bottomline, once you do have them, heroes in their current form are not unique or interesting. Unique skill sets would go a long way toward, for example, making Janusk a good character instead of an obligatory character you have to take just to get started. How many turns have you had Janusk following someone around with no weapons and no armor, because he wasn't worth the time, attention or gildar to invest in?

These are all great points.  The champions need to behave live true champions and be impressive to fight with and against.

I like the idea of specialized chmapions as farmers, mages, reserchers, treasure hunters and other professions that would level up in time other than just raw combat ability.

Indeed a master trader, after 200 turns of service would get a lot better in handling your finances over time to become an accounting wiz or that farmer could develope new crop rotatiosn that increase food/ore/research over time, given approprite opprotunities to level up.

RAT 

Well, I was thinking of the adventurers who begin with gear. There's a couple who start off with 9-11 attack and the same defense. If you play against the AI it's trivially easy to kill any amount of enemies with low defense (like bandits, wolves, or spiders) if you have a fair combat speed due to have easy it is to dance away from attacks - and champions have high combat speed. Most other champions are a waste though - although assassins seem fairly good - but the combat ones are great early on and are easily the equals to combat specialized sovereigns but with free starter gear.

I think I actually broke the game last night. One of my heroes had over 100 attack, with a bow. And she was an assassin. Another of my heroes could attack 3 times/turn with a bow, attack over 80.

My tank hero had a defense over 150 with at least 3 moves.

I also pumped my champions up with +hp charms, leaving my tank with well over 30 hp, and the rest well over 25.

 

And unless being able to wear several necklaces and rings is an exploit, I did not exploit the game.

 

Here's a hint as to how to do this: Stats are multipliers.

20 str = double attack bonus off your stuff

if you get adventuring level 5, you get books that give you +8 attack. This bonus is commulative with str, so with 20 str, it's 16 attack.

 

Disclaimer: I was lucky to have 3 gold mines in my vincity, with only 2 cities built.. I had over 20.000 gildar to spend on gear for my champions.

I feel exactly the opposite way. Heroes pay for themselves many times over if you take a few upgrades to the dungeon level. The amount of gildars from treasure chests and such is completely out of balance. 100/200 from the treasure chests, 600 from those level 4 treasury things... I get some heroes, make them grab all that money, meanwhile I've researched the "legendary plate" armor in the magic tree, buy it for all my heroes, slap 200 health rings, 100 attack rings and 50 defense rings on them (which is completely affordable with all the risk-free "adventuring" money, and they're completely unkillable while killing everything they come across with one blow. If you stick to "2 rings, one amulet, one pack" they're not on par with troops, so a fix needs to take that into account, but at the moment I'd say heroes are gamebreakingly strong, not too weak.

If I was you, I would have bought some 20 dragons instead.

It is you exploited the game aren't you ashamed of yourself now? haha

Has anyone confirmed (from stardock) whether or not the unlimited rings, packs, amulates is an intended feature or not? I would hypothize that most players are not even aware of this, and consequently just adding 1 or 2 items as per the expected usual RPG mechanics.

RAT

 

Actually, I use them in my current game ATM to get chests. I quickly went from almost broke to filthy rich as soon as I hit lvl 3 on my notable locations and started taking those treasure chests (you don't need anything other then lvl 1 heroes for that). OTOH, I didn't use that money to buy gear for heroes, just made a huge powerfull army that is guaranteed to take out anything in game ATM. And I'm still filthy rich as it's much cheaper then to make a heroes more powerfull. The whole point of this thread is not that you can't use heroes at all, it's that they are not worth investing in any money and that they have only limited non combat uses (normal troops being far better choice). Nothing you said actually counters this.

Actually,

You can mod the .xml files to drastically lower the prices of the shops, check this thread here on how to do it.(Very simple, just need use the ctl f key to find the value you need and just change the number inside it, and believe me when I say simple, as I have zero modding experience, lol)

But to sum it up:

Basically all you would need to do is edit the <Shopvalue> numbers within the .xml files, I decreased all standard unit costs by a good 60%, so now at least I got some reasonable prices for the starting equipment.

The main files you wanna focus on are CoreAccessories.xml, CoreArmor.xml, and CoreWeapons.xml, and CoreItems.xml you can also look at the special items too if you wanna go crazy, but I left that the same for now.(And they are also different .xml files too)

Ohh, one more thing, if you do edit the files, you will have to start a new game, or you won't see the changes, and the .xml files need to be place in your My Documents folder, (In other words make a copy of the originals, but don't edit those)

hope that helps.

What might help with making the value to Imbuing your champion with magic would be if every level increase automatically adds 0.25 essense or something to that champion. Keeping the option to add a full skill point to essense if the player chooses to increase that, but still giving the benefit of essense increase even if the champion is given strength as their attribute at that level. 0.25 wouldn't be game breaking either as I rarely get champions above level 10. Thats potentially around 2 full essense points that might make the champion useful in magic if the player doesn't choose to use that champion souly for magic use. It'd be enough to cast a defense spell or summon a smaller minion over time.

A question I have is do Champions have a constant drain on the economy? I was playing a game last night where I had a fairly large army and my economy was growing fine for a long time, but once I started recruiting champions (about a dozen of them) my economy turned to garbage. Whats more is that it said there was a positive increase in money, but I was still losing a significant amount each turn. Further, my dynasty grew to where I had great grand children and I had to continually battle monsters to keep a steady income. It was wierd that I had +50 gild per turn and yet my gild was decreasing by about 15 per turn. I wish there was a way to see every expense and addition to income per turn (GalCiv2 has I nice one if I remember correctly... Its been a while since I played that).

Hi mp8481! Yes, you can do that, in fact, if you look closely at that thread, I was the one that pointed out how to do it (I told the op how to go about doing what he wanted by using the increasing starting money example).

In fact, I'm in the process of playing around with those numbers even while I'm posting this, but the point of my original post was that Champions are broken beyond the original price of gear. I think it's great that we can fix it ourselves, but by and large most people who play the game don't want to do this and would rather Stardock correct the issue.

Not that there is anything wrong with your post, in fact it points out that some people can fix it for themselves - to a point. However, some of the larger issues will still remain.

Here's something: you can't make normal troops walk 50 squares and attack every city the opponent has in the same turn without losing a hitpoint.

champs are pretty tough.  the one thing I haven't seen mentioned is the ongoing cost of soldiers + build price vs champions.  seems over time that they are a better investment, doubly so if you imbue them.  And all stats appear to go up during a lvl up, the only thing you are changing is the base multiplier when you add the +1.

Tho I know most other games allow you to make gods, it makes more sense to me that if a human goes 1 on 1 vs a monster troll, he gets spattered unless he uses tatics.  Large groups and clever plans are supposedly what allowed our real world human ancestors to defeat larger prey.

From a gameplay perspective, there's some interesting points here, but I think they'd make this game feel more derivative and less unique.  I for one am loving this game thus far.

They did seem abit weak at 1st. getting killed left and right. But as time went on in the game, back them off abit from some fights then upgrade when you can. They can get pretty buff.

Sure there not great right off the bat, and gear can be expensive but with some planning and paitence they can be key players later in the game.

Some tweaks to make them abit more usefull could help though. There like pet projects to me, I take the time to use them as opposed to I use them because I need to.

 

That's not what a fantasy game is about, that is not why I pre-ordered this game. I was promised heroes, I want heroes, not the same crap I could get in Civ 4.

It would be nice if you had the option of picking additional traits for your champions every three levels or so.

E.g. I'd like to have more than one organised adventurer who can lead an army effectively.

Also, it appears that Royalty doesn't do anything at this point. I hired a couple of nobles along the way and I can see no benefit from their Royalty trait whatsoever.

I would like to see an option for the champions that works like the Tech up.   But let you pick how to focus the champion.  Such as "Combat" "Administration" "Mystic" " Generic"

Where at Lvl 2 You can pick which area you want them to try and imporve: and show skills that can aquire.  They would also be tracked at the bottom of there card   With a Sword + number , Crown + Number, a Staff  + number and Person + number. 

Skills would open up as they leveled one area up..  Some skill would require more than one area.     

Generic" would cover a Generic bonuses 

Such as,

Fast Healing, Unit Recoever +1 hp per turn on world map. 

Helth Conscious, Unit Gets + 4 hit points " With care of diet and training your body stays healther" 

Fast Walker : +1 Move 

Keen eye: +1 sight range

Scavanger: +10% loot from explored sites 

Fast Talker: 10% off mercent prices 

ect.. 

 

New starting Traites : such as

Magical Heritage: " There is magic locked deep within this person, with Just a the right catalyst they will be-able to call apon it" (Cost: 0 Essence to make a Channler" Gets 5 essence once they aquire there heritage.  

Game wise You cast the Channler spell on them but it does not cost you essence. 

thats all I can think of right now..