How do I talk to/hire the wandering adventurers and tech guys and such?

I think you have to have enough money to talk to them.

BTW, don't higher them unless they are level 1 royals. All the other benefits are really bad, and champions are really really inefficient with the current build.

You either don't have enough money to hire them, or they are too high level for you.

It would be great if they'ed explain to you exactly why they won't talk to you, but at the moment they don't.

They do, sort of. Left-click on them, then mouse over the "hire" icon on the action tab, and it will tell you why not.

Conditions for hiring a hero.

1. You have to have enough gold to hire them.

2. They are in your sphere of influence OR they are beside one of your units

In my 1.06 game there was a bug feature where occasionally I was able to hire some champions that were not adjacent to any of my units and that were several squares outside my area of influence.  Normally this isn't possible as you state.  I haven't seen this feature in 1.07 (yet?).

So it wouldn't hurt to check the 'hire' option on the off chance...

 

I am seeing the not in influence hiring in 1.07 as well.

Me too, I thought it seemed weird that I hired someone when i was about ten squares away.

I was wondering if anyone knows about or can direct me to how the hireling bonuses work, such as a bonus to food, or movement speed?

Do they only activate with the NPC stationed in a city, or do they occur whether in a group or in a city?

Thanks

Administrator and Farmer only work if they're in a city and it applies to that city. All others are global or apply to the unit as appropriate. Royalty does not seem to work at all.

well my hero had a movement of about 9+ moves per turn, so maybe thats why i could hire guys that were outside of my influence even though i wasn't near them. maybe it was calculating that i could be near them if i chose to travel to them within that one turn. idk, just a guess why the code is off.

Some of the "heroes" are worth hiring if you are fortunate to have several of the same type of resource in a given city's influence. The farmer's with +20% are quite useful in a city with 2 or more food resources.  The miner's with +20% are useful in those cities with 2+ mines. Adminsitrators with 20% bonuses are also good for upping the material output of your city. (park them in the one with your Great Mill)  Some of the adventurers are also good to have. Nibaljdi (sp?) for instance has great stats (mostly 16's+) right from the beginning and if you can get her early in the game she makes a great queen. (your children tend to have better stats as a result)  Royalty does seem to be broken.  Assasin's are only really useful if you plan to melee with your champions. With the champions so weak, that's not a good idea.  Lore Masters and Tech Masters ..if you can get one right off the bat do so. (Not worth it later in the game). You won't have to wait for the Arcane Laboratory or Study to be completed to start researching. This could give you a small jump in spell/tech advantage.

I got a 1.06 game (large map, 5 fallen foes, second-hardest difficulty) and had a lot of luck with a non-melee, no normal troops, spellcasting Sov,  many imbued champions (including my 4 kids), and as few cities as possible (settled only 2, the others I conquered).  I made it a point to seek out and recruit any and all champs as a main part of the strategy  for the game.  The wife had the dominate trait (don't they all?  ) which was passed down to the daughters (no comment ).  All 4 kids got channeling for free. 

At ~turn 300 I had 15 channelers (me, wife, 4 kids, in one stack with 6 summoned earth elemental things; second stack had 9 imbued champs -- 2 were daughter-in-laws -- and a few summoned fire giants).  Few foes got close enough to melee these stacks.  Most of the kids had essence in the 60-70 range, and the imbued champs in the 40-50 range.

 

Thanks for the replies.That was helpful.