The focus should be, while balancing, to increase the effectiveness of regular troops in the early game. I read your reply and immediately started calculating ways to nerf the abilities of heroes. Heroes are fine though. It's regulars that need to be better.
I say nerf the loot from goodie huts to be less awesome. You can get a whole bunch of endgame loot just from scouting. That power should be replaced with regulars supplementing heroes earlier in the game. No high end loot is needed then. Just give out basic gear and let the regulars join the early game battles.
This is most easily done by making units build faster from the capital. That way we can get units out there helping the Sov and the first heroes. This will also slow down armies, making scouts necessary in the early game. Right now I don't need to build any due to the speed of my Sov's army. Then some players could even choose to speed up their regulars with traits, letting the main army scout, instead of using them all for defense bonuses.
