Heroes all look the same if I have enough money

I find the same thing happens in my games. I feel the solution is fairly simple, firstly i feel we should be able to edit the primary/secondary/unit colours on our heroes that we can at least create unique looks for them. Then its a case of content, the game needs more weapon and armor models and particle effects that match certain abilitys would be great.

I guess my point is I feel the same as you but I am sure over the next two years you will see some real strides in this area.

For me it's not just the looks, although I can see how my post read that way.   I also would like it if the heroes didn't all feel like they play the same.

the game mechanics don't have the scope for much variation unfortunately. in theory you have a choice of maybe three kinds of hero: ranged weapons, melee weapons and magic. unfortunately stats don't effect spells nearly enough that there's much advantage to focusing on INT, and even if they did it wouldn't effect your equipment because there is no magical equipment, nor any real disadvantage to armour.

the easiest solutions would be

- increasing the role of stats in spells. some spells currently use INT and some use shards to increase damage. they need to come up with a consistent approach (even if that's all spells using BOTH).

- make magic competetive through the game. scaling is great and spells should scale with abilities, but trying to make one fireball spell that scales perfectly through the game is impossible. it would either be ridiculously mana cheap in the late game, or expensive in the early game. we need a book of greater fire etc that gives a more powerful fireball, or whatever. you shouldn't be endlessly researching slightly more powerful spells spells either, but a compromise is necesarry. look at D&D. spells scale slightly, but there are still more powerful ones for strategic variation.

- introduce items that improve your magic abilities that compete with weapons and armour. magic robes with lower defence that increase your intelligence in battles, magic staffs with lower attack that give you your first 10 points of mana consumption free in each battle. stuff like that.

- design a weapon system where different weapons are not just better or worse vis a vis, but have different stategic rolls. lances that give mounted weapons a charge bonus, spears that are great against charging enemies, swords that are better in a protracted fight. a magic one handed sword i get in a quest should not be worse at it's job than a mundane one handed sword i research later (or reaper, scimitar or broadsword, whatever you call it). weapon type = role, magic = quality. that's the distinction we need.

Agreed, this has been discussed before, just to throw out a few ideas I've liked (with no claim to originality):

-Make leather and/or chain mail separate tech lines, not strictly inferior to plate, but a viable alternative with different strengths/weaknesses. This would be good not just for champions but for units in general, there's currently not enough to discourage you from decking everyone out in plate, even the archers/casters/etc.

-Similarly to above, have a separate line of caster-centric gear - both "armor" (i.e. robes and pointy hats!) and "weapons" (staffs, wands, etc.). Presumably with int or other spell bonuses but less defense - again this combats the "cover everyone in plate" trend and might even make pure caster sovereigns more viable. Not that spells are bad currently, but there's not much reason to focus on them when your sovereign can be a plate-wearing melee with minimal int who can also throw out non-int-scaling spells just fine. If he was missing out on significant spell bonuses from not wearing caster gear, it might be different.

-Special abilities! There are a few you see champions starting with, and this helps slightly to make champions more unique, but it'd be better if you had the choice of a new special ability - or improving an existing one - upon levelling up, instead of stat bonuses perhaps.

Edit: Sethai there beat me to a couple of these. I'll also second his suggestion of making the differences between weapons more meaningful - it's still really a game of "pick the highest damage number," but this could easily be fixed as he points out.

I wonder if this is a viable solution:

By going up the Hero recruiting techs, not only do you increase the level of heroes spawning and such, but you increase the chance of your heroes learning a new Skill/Talent based on what they are doing.  This can be tied in to the talents they already have.

For example, a hero with the research bonus can "learn" a talent depending if they:

  1. sit in a city

     - Research based city (research > +25?): learn +10%? research talent

     - Arcane based city (arcane > +25?): learn +10%? arcane talent

     - Gold based city (gold > 50+/turn?): learn +10%? gold talent

     - defended a city: learn "City Defender" talent (+5 strength? when in city?)

2. not in a city

     - not in a city/not doing quests for the last 50? turns: learn "Explorer" talent (+1 movement?)

     - not in a city/stepped in a quest building for the last 50? turns: learn "Quester" talent (+ strength?/+ movement?)

     - fought 10 monsters in the last 100 turns... + strength... etc

But they only have a % change to learn the talent, such as 0% when no Hero recruiting tech researched, 3% at first level, 5% at next level... etc which can also increase depending on the Adventuring level.

Now that I think about it, it doesn't do much to individualize heroes... but I'll post it just in case it helps someone with an idea.

Also, make armor worn by females female looking.  Not chain-mail bikinis or anything dumb, just somewhat different for variety's sake.

No, if there is to be a difference between male and female armor, I for one defintely want bikini chainmail... 

No bikini chainmail please. If there's one thing I appreciate about Elemental, it's that the women all don't look like hoors.

For me, the big problem is that I don't have any reasons to make people look different. I'm happy to leave someone in a robe for immersion's sake....but I want game play reasons for doing it.

There should be far more trade offs among the different equipment types than there are now, much like it used to be. Unfortunately, with the tactical battle and stat rework, they basically simplified all the gear down to cost, damage and maybe one or two other traits, because it was too hard to meaningfully balance all that stuff and re-write the system at the same time.

Now that the stats are more set in stone....they need to return to armor giving characters speed penalties, and all the other trade offs. There is no practical reason no to buy Legendary Platemail for everyone if you have the money and that's just not interesting.

Even stat requirements to wear some kinds of gear would be an improvement over what we have now, because at least that would give you some direction in how to develop heroes differently.