As it stands now, heroes have some serious issues. What Stardock plans for them, I don't know, so I'm making these suggestions assuming Stardock thinks they're fine. Which I doubt, but still...they need some work.
There are three fundamental problems with heroes that make them unfun and/or not useful to the player. I'll talk about what I think the problems are first then move on to suggestions.
1. Heroes, at the core, are not different from each other at all.
2. Heroes do not grow in meaningful or effective ways.
3. Heroes cannot specialize except in two areas, combat and magic, which undercuts the need for having more than two heroes.
On #1:
If you were to subtract all the flavor detail from a hero, and take away their special ability, you could not tell one hero from another. At level 1, they all have the generic stats, all 10s for the most part, and either Assassin, Merchant, Crushing Blow, Administrator, Adventurer or Researcher, ect...
That leaves us with a total absence of anything that really defines heroes. Not even their race matters, period, because a Kingdom player would just as readily hire a Tarth Adventurer as a Wraith. They have the same stats as your sovereign initially, can come with the same abilities, can fill the same role once imbued and end up equipped with nearly identical stuff.
On #2: Heroes grow purely through stat gains. There is no other development besides that. And that's fairly uninteresting. Not only do they not grow in interesting ways, the ways they do grow only make them marginally more effective.
You can give them more hitpoints, but you'll run into monsters that can deal all their life and then some in damage. You can put it all into strength, in which case your hero is a paper tiger and dies to the first set of arrows that find them. You can put it all into dex, in which case your hero is just a total annoyance to enemies and STILL dies to the first hit that finds them. You can put it all into Charisma, but why would you do that, honestly? You don't need more than 4 heroes, and you never really need heroes so bad that you crave a discount for their services. Intelligence and Essence are the two stat gains that really pay dividends, but even they are somewhat uninteresting because of how magic damage currently works.
On #3: When you get down to brass tax, there are only three kinds of heroes. Those that fight, those that cast spells, and those that do neither exceptionally well or at all. That would be your farmers, your administrators, researchers and merchants.
One could argue that their abilities create a useful role for them in game...but I'd disagree. +1 Gildar, +1 Production, +1 Research or +25% food mean nothing in the mid to late game, at all.
So you're left with fighters and casters. A second caster, while useful, is a redundant role...which is ok, except with the right amount of stat spending, they're the total equal of your sovereign and totally steal their thunder. Fighters are effective overall (with the right gear) but because they'll never get the kind of HPs you get with troop-sized squads of elite soldiers, you never want to put them in combat against even a mildly threatening opponent.There really isn't any depth to specializing them for combat either. You can play off different values of strength, dex, con and gear, but that's just fiddling with the numbers. There's nothing dramatic, and Level 5 feels the same as Level 10.
Conclusion: Based on my game experiences, without considering your dynasty, you end up with two fighters who have never really engaged in combat, one admin sort who just follows the army around or provides a trivial bonus and one caster that usually serves as a second army leader. (Since they're practically your sovereign.) The process of leveling them and watching them grow holds no joy, just a repetition of stat spending knowing it's not having a ton of impact on their performance, and that your regular troops carry the entire war effort.
Suggestions
#1: Making heroes stand out from each other from Level 1. Heroes should not start with all stats in the same ball park. While leveled heroes display some variance in stats, it's never more than a 5 point difference, and you focus on Intelligence or Strength to determine what they're going to be most effective at doing.
Level 1 heroes should display a range of stats, even Janusk, in keeping with the randomness of the game. This will CLEARLY make some heroes better than others, which means you actually have a choice to make instead of just saying "Well I want this guy because he looks like an adventurer and not a merchant with a stick." You may get stuck with less than awesome heroes, which is ok I think, since it provides an additional challenge. Heroes need a higher variance of starting gear as well, especially early game when good equipment is pricey and a well-equipped hero looks much more appealing than said merchant with a stick.
Race should be a factor too. I don't know how hard this would be for Stardock, but currently it seems like all heroes race = Adventurer. There's no distinction there between a goblin looking adventurer, a female human adventurer, or a Wraith adventurer. There needs to be those things, again so we have more variance and more choices to think about when we select heroes.
#2 and #3: Creating a system that provides for interesting and meaningful character growth, and allows for varied or intense specialization of roles
As was said, heroes only grow through stats, and are defined by their one special ability.
There's very little specialization offered with that. Merchants et. al can't do anything, that I know of, with their profession. Casters can get more juice and damage, and fighters can get stronger and tougher, but the rest nothing.
So I think in addition to growing stats, heroes need a minor but useful skill tree so that the player can make some additional choices, specialize heroes to different, unique roles, and generally have reasons to care about them other than the fact they've invested the whole game in them.
I suggest there be 5 generic trees: Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence and Charisma and Constitution.
Each tree has several skills that can be bought at certain level intervals. Each skill has an associated stat requirement with it, and the hero must meet or exceed the requirement to learn it. A hero can only choose one skill from each group, meaning they can only have one of the lvl 2 skills, one of the lvl 5, and one of the Lvl 10.
These numbers are just examples, btw;
Ex:
Strength Tree
Earned at Lvl 2, Str 12+:
Crushing Blow (as in game)
Piercing Strike (as in the Sovereign ability that bypasses armor)
Relentless - 20% chance to launch one extra attack
Earned at Lvl 5, Str 16+:
Two-handed weapon master - Character ignores combat speed penalty for 2-handed weapons
Duelist - Character deals 1.5x damage with single-handed weapons
Hateful - Character can and always will counterattack all opponents in melee
Earned at Lvl 10+, Str 21+:
Legendary Slayer: Character deals 2x damage to large, monstrous creatures
Nemesis - Character deals 1.5x damage to heroes of opposing factions
Executioner: 50% chance the character automatically kills a foe in combat that has less than 15% health
Intelligence Tree
Earned at Lvl 2, Int 12+:
Insightful - Character gains +10% mana regen on the world map
Practiced - Character is more accurate with spells and misses less often (+20%)
Focused - Character deals damage with spells at the top end of the damage scale more often - (20% to 100% vs. 1% to 100%)
Earned at Lvl 5, Int 16+:
Counter spell - Adds 10% to the chance that all spell attacks against the character will miss
Mana Beast - Character regens 1 or more mana every time they struck with an enemy spell
Innovator - All spells cost this character 20% less mana to cast
Earned at Level 10+, Int 21+:
Channeler - The character has discovered their own innate ability to channel, and can use the full range of spells (Except imbue) as the sovereign. (More about this below)
Feared Sorcerer - The caster regains mana when they kill another creature, up to 10% of the creature's total life.
Specialist - The caster chooses one element to specialize in, and gains bonuses to casting spells from that element but gains minuses to casting all others.
Dexterity Tree
Earned at Lvl 2, Dex 12+
Side step - The character always has a base 5% chance to dodge any melee attack.
Blade hand - The character gains .25 Combat Speed when using a single handed sword or dagger.
Arrow catcher - Any non-magic ranged attack against this character misses 10% more often.
Earned at Lvl 5, Dex 16+
Camouflage - When this character travels alone, or all characters in the army possess this skill, there is a 50% chance any CREATURE attacking them will abort the attack, because the hero(s) have hidden. Soldiers of other factions cannot be so easily fooled.
Pathfinder - This character reduces all environmental movement penalties by 1/2 for the army they are in.
Parry - All melee-counter attacks against this character only do 1/2 the normal damage.
Earned at Lvl 10+, Dex 21+
Damn Lucky - If an attack reduces this character's life to zero, there is a 50% chance the attack will miss instead. This ability cannot go off twice in one battle.
Athletic - All combat speed penalties imposed by armor are reduced by 1/2 for this character.
Dead eye - This character always hits their target with melee or ranged attacks, unless otherwise prevented by an opponent's ability or spell.
Charisma Tree
Earned at Lvl 2, Cha 12+:
Expert haggler - The character reduces the cost of all item purchases when they are within the sphere of influence by 10%.
Recruiter - All troops trained in a city where this hero is within the sphere of influence cost 10% less gildar.
Silver-tongued - There is a 10% that when a humanoid creature attacks the character's party, they will abort the combat and return to the wilderness.
Earned at Lvl 5, Cha 16+:
Master Organizer - All caravan benefits in the city where this character resides are increased by 20%
Peerless Academic - All cities you possess produce 1 more point of worldly knowledge than they would otherwise
Demagogue: There is a 25% chance that, at the start of a battle in which this character is involved, all enemy units start with 1/2 as many action points the first turn.
Earned at Lvl 10+, Cha 21+:
Tycoon - All cities you possess produce 10% more gildar than they normally would.
Inspirational Leader - Any army this hero is part of moves 1 extra tile on the world map, and each unit fights with a 10% bonus to attack rating
Beloved hero - Any resource producing objects (farms, quarries, forests, mines, gildar, ect..) produce one additional unit while this hero is within the sphere of influence.
Constitution Tree
Earned at Lvl 2, Con 12+
Hearty - This character only takes 1/2 damage from poison based attacks.
Thickskinned - This character gains 1 point of natural defense.
Linemen - This character gains 1.25x the defense value offered by a shield.
Earned at Lvl 5, Con 16+
Blood drinker - This character gains 1 HP whenever they kill an enemy.
Quick healer - This character regains 1 HP per turn while not in combat.
Giant breed - This character gains 2 HP every level, on top of any points they gain from spending on constitution.
Earned at Lvl 10+, Con 21+:
Juggernaut - All combat speed penalties imposed by both weapons and armor are reduced by 50% for this character.
Regeneration - This character regains 1 HP per round in combat.
Of Stone - This character takes 10% less damage from all sources, after defense is calculated.
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Even if Stardock goes with something of their own completely, a system like this has a lot of benefits for us and them:
-It's easy to mod and add to, simply increasing the breadth of people's choices within each category.
-It's limited both in the power it offers and how much you can get with a single character. So it is restrained to not unbalance the game, and offers a lot of replayability through your heroes.
-It allows you to really specialize your heroes in a way that the game only scratches at now.
-We'll actually care about these heroes and get interested and excited about their development!
Heroes also need to stay at least semi-competitive with the rest of the world (which spits out ever more threatening monsters like crazy) without having to blow all their points on combat stats and all your money on gear.
So I propose heroes just gain 1 Attk/Def every level. By level 10, they'll be base 10/10, which makes them extremely weak by end game standards, but average up through the early and early-mid game stages. When you add gear, in it's current state, the bonus will kind of disappear anyways.
In closing: When you combine a skill tree, with stat-limited bonus abilities and more random stat distribution at start than we have now, you arrive at more dynamic heroes, more choices for the player and especially more "sit there and think real hard about what you need now vs. what you want" moments. It looks like a lot of work, but I tried to make it all relevant to the core of what the game is now and my (incomplete) understanding of the systems. I especially tried to not duplicate ideas or things already found in the game. YMMV, in the end these are just suggestions to get Stardock thinking about where heroes need to go, and the ways they could do that. Even if some mechanics change drastically, the theme of skill trees would add a lot of zest to heroes and be easily exportable to whatever Elemental is in six months, or a year.
An aside about spell casting heroes vs. your Sovereign:
Imbuing your champions really makes your sovereign not stand out as a character. They get access to all the same spells, and quickly catch up to your Sovereign in raw stats as you rebuy essence. Sure, they don't have all the sovereign's abilities...but those don't stand out now as it is.
So I really think any champion you imbue should always be able to cast ONE LEVEL LOWER spells than the sovereign can cast. At the very least, you'll be able to look with pride at your sovereign and know there's something they can do that no one else in your army can.
That's the end:
If you took the time to read all this, thanks. Even if it's all crap, it's still a somewhat desperate cry to Stardock that heroes in their current state fall far short of what they could be.
As it stands now, heroes have some serious issues. What Stardock plans for them, I don't know, so I'm making these suggestions assuming Stardock thinks they're fine.
There are three fundamental problems with heroes that make them unfun and/or not useful to the player. I'll talk about what I think the problems are first then move on to suggestions.
1. Heroes, at the core, are not different from each other at all.
2. Heroes do not grow in meaningful or effective ways.
3. Heroes cannot specialize except in two areas, combat and magic, which undercuts the need for having more than two heroes.
On #1:
If you were to subtract all the flavor detail from a hero, and take away their special ability, you could not tell one hero from another. At level 1, they all have the generic stats, all 10s, and either Assassin, Merchant, Crushing Blow, Administrator, Adventurer or Researcher.
That leaves us with a total absence of anything that really defines heroes. Not even their race matters, period, because a Kingdom player would just as readily hire a Tarth Adventurer as a Wraith. They have the same stats as your sovereign initially, can come with the same abilities, can fill the same role once imbued and end up equipped with nearly identical stuff.
On #2: Heroes grow purely through stat gains. There is no other development besides that. And that's fairly uninteresting. Not only do they not grow in interesting ways, the ways they do grow only make them marginally more effective.
You can give them more hitpoints, but you'll run into monsters that can deal all their life and then some in damage. You can put it all into strength, in which case your hero is a paper tiger and dies to the first set of arrows that find them. You can put it all into dex, in which case your hero is just a total annoyance to enemies and STILL dies to the first hit that finds them. You can put it all into Charisma, but why would you do that, honestly? You don't need more than 4 heroes, and you never really need heroes so bad that you crave a discount for their services. Intelligence and Essence are the two stat gains that really pay dividends, but even they are somewhat uninteresting because of how magic damage currently works.
On #3: When you get down to brass tax, there are only three kinds of heroes. Those that fight, those that cast spells, and those that do neither exceptionally well or at all. That would be your farmers, your administrators, researchers and merchants.
One could argue that their abilities create a useful role for them in game...but I'd disagree. +1 Gildar, +1 Production, +1 Research or +25% food mean nothing in the mid to late game, at all.
So you're left with fighters and casters. A second caster, while useful, is a redundant role...which is ok, except with the right amount of stat spending, they're the total equal of your sovereign and totally steal their thunder. Fighters are effective overall (with the right gear) but because they'll never get the kind of HPs you get with troop-sized squads of elite soldiers, you never want to put them in combat against even a mildly threatening opponent.There really isn't any depth to specializing them for combat either. You can play off different values of strength, dex, con and gear, but that's just fiddling with the numbers. There's nothing dramatic, and Level 5 feels the same as Level 10.
Conclusion: Based on my game experiences, without considering your dynasty, you end up with two fighters who have never really engaged in combat, one admin sort who just follows the army around or provides a trivial bonus and one caster that usually serves as a second army leader. (Since they're practically your sovereign.) The process of leveling them and watching them grow holds no joy, just a repetition of stat spending knowing it's not having a ton of impact on their performance, and that your regular troops carry the entire war effort.
Suggestions
#1: Making heroes stand out from each other from Level 1. Heroes should not start with all stats in the same ball park. While leveled heroes display some variance in stats, it's never more than a 5 point difference, and you focus on Intelligence or Strength to determine what they're going to be most effective at doing.
Level 1 heroes should display a range of stats, even Janusk, in keeping with the randomness of the game. This will CLEARLY make some heroes better than others, which means you actually have a choice to make instead of just saying "Well I want this guy because he looks like an adventurer and not a merchant with a stick." You may get stuck with less than awesome heroes, which is ok I think, since it provides an additional challenge. Heroes need a higher variance of starting gear as well, especially early game when good equipment is pricey and a well-equipped hero looks much more appealing than said merchant with a stick.
Race should be a factor too. I don't know how hard this would be for Stardock, but currently it seems like all heroes race = Adventurer. There's no distinction there between a goblin looking adventurer, a female human adventurer, or a Wraith adventurer. There needs to be those things, again so we have more variance and more choices to think about when we select heroes.
#2 and #3: Creating a system that provides for interesting and meaningful character growth, and allows for varied or intense specialization of roles
As was said, heroes only grow through stats, and are defined by their one special ability.
There's very little specialization offered with that. Merchants et. al can't do anything, that I know of, with their profession. Casters can get more juice and damage, and fighters can get stronger and tougher, but the rest nothing.
So I think in addition to growing stats, heroes need a minor but useful skill tree so that the player can make some additional choices, specialize heroes to different, unique roles, and generally have reasons to care about them other than the fact they've invested the whole game in them.
I suggest there be 5 generic trees: Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence and Charisma and Constitution.
Each tree has several skills that can be bought at certain level intervals. Each skill has an associated stat requirement with it, and the hero must meet or exceed the requirement to learn it. A hero can only choose one skill from each group, meaning they can only have one of the lvl 2 skills, one of the lvl 5, and one of the Lvl 10.
Ex:
Strength Tree
Earned at Lvl 2:
Crushing Blow (as in game) - Str 12+
Piercing Strike (as in the Sovereign ability that bypasses armor) - Str 12+
Relentless - 20% chance to launch one extra attack - Str +10
Earned at Lvl 5:
Two-handed weapon master - Character ignores combat speed penalty for weapon - Str 16+
Duelist - Character deals 1.5x damage with single-handed weapons - Str 15+
Hateful - Character can and always will counterattack all opponents in melee - Str 16+
Earned at Lvl 10:
Legendary Slayer: Character deals 2x damage to large, monstrous creatures - Str 21+
Nemesis - Character deals 1.5x damage to heroes of opposing factions - Str 21+
Executioner: 50% chance the character automatically kills a foe in combat that has less than 15% health - Str 21+
Intelligence Tree
Earned at Lvl 2:
Insightful - Character gains +10% mana regen on the world map - Int 12+
Practiced - Character is more accurate with spells and misses less often (+20%) - Int 12+
Focused - Character deals damage with spells at the top end of the damage scale more often - (20% to 100% vs. 1% to 100%) - Int 12+
Earned at Lvl 5:
Counter spell - Adds 10% to the chance that all spell attacks against the character will miss - Int 16+
Mana Beast - Character regens 1 or more mana every time they struck with an enemy spell - Int 16+
Innovator - All spells cost this character 20% less mana to cast - Int 16+
Earned at Level 10:
Channeler - The character has discovered their own innate ability to channel, and can use the full range of spells as the sovereign. Int 21+ (More about this below)
Feared Sorcerer - The caster regains mana when they kill another creature, up to 10% of the creature's total life. Int 21+
Specialist - The caster chooses one element to specialize in, and gains bonuses to casting spells from that element but gains minuses to casting all others. Int 21+
Dexterity Tree
Charisma Tree
Earned at Lvl 2:
Expert haggler - The character reduces the cost of all item purchases when they are within the sphere of influence by 10%. - Charisma 12+
Recruiter - All troops trained in a city where this hero is within the sphere of influence cost 10% less gildar. - Charisma 12+
Silver-tongued - There is a 10% that when a humanoid creature attacks the character's party, they will abort the combat and return to the wilderness. - Charisma 12+
Earned at Lvl 5:
Master Organizer - All caravan benefits in the city where this character resides are increased by 20% - Charisma 16+
Peerless Academic - All cities you possess produce 1 more point of worldly knowledge than they would otherwise - Charisma 16+
Demagogue: There is a 25% chance that, at the start of a battle in which this character is involved, all enemy units start with 1/2 as many action points the first turn. - Charisma 16+
Earned at Lvl 10:
Tycoon - All cities you possess produce 10% more gildar than they normally would. Charisma 21+
Inspirational Leader - Any army this hero is part of moves 1 extra tile on the world map, and each unit fights with a 10% bonus to attack rating - Charisma 21+
Beloved hero - Any resource producing objects (farms, quarries, forests, mines, gildar, ect..) produce one additional unit while this hero is within the sphere of influence - Charisma 21+
