Hmm, the dragon only shows up once though, so a strict rock paper scissors would result in late game heroes not being able to find their target, and armies being the only viable strategy. Of course if we expanded the adventure tree a little this wouldn't be a problem.
However, at issue, heroes fall into 3 groups, loosely. Summoners, IE magic tree heroes, that build armies. They're your backrank support, and work fine basically as is. (although summon bombs are way too strong. Summons really need a 1 turn cooldown, so you can't attack, resummon, attack, etc.) (oh, and using in combat mana regeneration, alongside morale crippling on a neutral, summon bombs can currently kill any target in your territory, regardless of power.)
Battle Mages, that cast spells such as ice spike, haste and deflect to support their troops. Straight forward again, they have more focus on intelligence than their counterparts, but are an alternative method of using the magic tree. It's hard to tell the current state of these units, since they scale to environment, but seem generally fine, with one exception- damage spells don't work right now.
Warriors, heroes that run up and hit their target, and the ones that most people tend to focus on. These units are curious because as it stands they're still brokenly strong and worthlessly weak. IE using certain 'cheap' tactics these heroes can kill any number of enemies on their first round of combat. These heroes mostly rely on the adventure tree, both as a fount of power, and as the tree that rewards their use.
Now, A summoner doesn't directly partake in battle, and a battle mage functions as an empowered troop force- so the third part of your triangle is warrior heroes. The issue here is that the triangle states:
Adventure counters Adventure counters Warfare
IE, the person who invests in Adventure has 2 parts of the triangle, while the person who invests in warfare only gets to be eaten by dragons. Since the very heroes that the armies counter are working alongside dragons, but the armies are not working alongside heroes, it becomes necessary to always rush up adventure.
So what alternative do I promote therefore-
Simple: An equal cost of armies squared off against an equal cost of heroes should kill the heroes. Dragons should be seen as an extension of the heroes, basically a cool summon. In return, the heroes gain several defensive advantages allowing them to easily focus larger quantities of force on a specific situation than their rivals are capable of. IE the purpose of armies and heroes differ on the strategic scale. An army is built to attack an enemy, and is thus burdened with heavier upkeeps and a lack of defensive advantages, in return for a better stat to cost ratio. Champions are meant to be used with peaceful strategies that focus on building up resources and overwhelming an enemy only after a decisive advantage has been achieved in the strategic battlefield. Right now, the defensive advantages of heroes, as previously noted, are way too high. However, if we reduce the availability of free mana, the replicability of summons and the capacity to stun multiple units indefinitely, then heroes must fight more fairly. As it stands though, heroes fighting fairly just means heroes dying- they have way too little health to survive even a single blow. This is easily fixed by adding extra hero only items to the item shop that address the discrepancy. (in a game such as elemental tactical combat, wherein one side goes first, it is imperative that the first turn not determine the game. Higher health pools, and the elimination of perma stun would go a long way towards this goal.)
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