[Suggestions] Easy to implement changes to rebalance Heroes and make Units interesting
Elemental Forums
Sorry for those who read it already in another post, but I was afraid not much people read it and I really wanted some feedback on it 
This comes from reading posts and watching a lot of videos of beta games since I am not playing the beta. Sorry if some comments are mistargeted.
The objective
- Heroes should be born weak but with the potential of becoming magnificent. Normal units should be relatively less strong than heroes as the game progresses, but always effective to deal with. I make two examples to give an idea of what I mean, though you may not agree on the details:
- a single swordman (or any other decent melee base unit) should be weaker than a low-level hero, but the low-level hero should be no match for a group of 5 base swordsmen, even if he has some equip.
- a single high level hero with extremely good equip should still have a very hard time against 6+ leveled high-end units with good weapons and armors.
Some ideas how to get there
- per-level bonuses should not be dropped as someone suggests. Instead, they are indeed very useful if we want heroes to progress from weak to magnificent through levels (in MoM this was a lot of fun). Since this may induce people to choose fixed bonuses early on and per-level bonuses later on as they level up, I’d suggest either:
- that per-level bonuses, in the form of “path of the …”, are given only for the first 2-3 level up, to define the path of the hero, and never for subsequent level-up’s
- that per-level means for each level after that the hero picked up the ability
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every faction should have 1-2 units with ability that really make a difference, as Elven Lords or Griffin used to have in MoM (e.g. armor piercing+first strike). These abilities should be very rare even for heroes. This would help to make units an interesting piece to deal with even in end-game.
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Heroes should not be immortal. I am the first who doesn’t like my hero to die, but I understand it’s part of the fun in a game. There are many ways one can make death a costly but avoidable consequence: allow heroes to flee, allow a Death ward spell – I am sure this was already in the game, and maybe it’s still there – or a building that can capture the soul of a dead hero together with a spell that can bring him back after x seasons… all of these should have a cost in terms of time and/or game resources (mana or others). But not immortality upfront with just a scar... cool idea, but with too little impact.
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Recruiting a hero should not be cheap and easy and right at the beginning. Not all at once. I suggest it costs you more gold, or it requires more factions points (as fame was in MoM) that you don’t have at the beginning. This forces you to train regulars to deal with early aggressions – there should be early aggressions, i.e. monsters that come to knock your door asking for food: you.
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Imbuing a champion should come at a higher cost. Players like high cost for high rewards, and imbuing a champion is indeed an extremely good thing, so it sohuld not come cheap. Some ideas here:
- Make cost scale up: first imbue 40, second imbue 120, third 360…
- Make champions have a “magic propensity” trait that determines the cost of imbue, so that melee oriented heroes are much harder to endow with spells than wiz-oriented ones. On average imbue should be much more costly than now.
- Make imbue costly in some other way (e.g. you must sacrifice a magic shard through a ritual…)
- Not sure how dodge works, but this may be another factor in favor of heroes
- [on a different note] Not sure how it is now, but heroes should not be able to equip all items they find. I hope even now that a chainmail cannot be used by all heroes, for instance – not a matter of realism but a matter of bigger diversity among heroes.
For more on making Units interesting I have a thread on City Guilds (https://forums.elementalgame.com/416510/page/1/#3074913) tell me what you think!
Although I did get throwing knives last night 
