Hi Ausland, you know the champs have already been toned down once right? Do you really want them toned down further? I have only had limited experience eith beta 3 but it seems the AI sovs have got better at the exploring and goodie hut side of things so that should help to even things out a bit

Havent been able to play a whole game yet so I havent been able to really assess the AI - I plan to have a proper crack at it after next week

Just out of curiousity what difficulty are you playing it on?

The main problems are that armor ratings even on leather is huge, AI dont attack often and monsters suck. Even with just a shield and 2 leather oieces you can ignore attacks from axes and low level monsters.

Monsters are generally laughable compared to even the starting Sov so you can just grab all the nearby loot and clear up the neaby lairs without even building troops.

The AI, especially friendly ones never seem to attack you, ive only ever been attacked by Yithril and they sucked at it.

The world is just exp and loot, I got this hero without ever building any troops whatsoever, up till I blitzed at turn 250 he was my entire military

I agree the concepts are right for the leveling but the items are too strong vs the ones you can research: why even take time to build an axemen troop while your hero with some armor and one magic weapon can destroy loads of regiments... Better just recruit lv 3, 5 and 9 heroes then pesky low lv units with bad equipment...On a third game on challenging, didn't even build a single troop and destroyed all factions with heroes and yes, a summoned fire elemental (that helped my sovereign). It's the second time in a row I do this. Well it all depends of the starting position I guess. I have to mention that Tarth made his first city near a wyvern and that he never expanded (basically the AI would try to defeat the wyvern and lose, then spam militias, return, and lose again). Was a bit sad, in challenging, to see that poor lv 2 lady while my Magnar lord was already lv 11... This will be solved, I know, in future patchs.

I also agree with this post: taking a city is far too easy. I think this could be adressed an easy way. By bringing balistas on the walls that can deal major damage once a turn to a random troop. If my hero would take 10-20 dmg a round, I wouldn't risk to attack a city alone vs 4-5 militias. I would then need an army to back him up because he would certainly die alone. Cities need strong defense mecanism that can upgrade with tech (balistas/catapults etc...). This would prevent the single hero destroying empires. A lot of balance needs to be made with building and such but the concepts are right, just need to twitch the whole.

Items need to be scaled down a bit or basic weapons (sword, spear, daguers, axe etc...) should arrive in the first batch of military research. Later in the game, you could still build more powerfull version of them (the concept is already in, the troops just need to be potent right from the start). It would be nice to have snapshots info of each cities stating what lv of regiments they can build.

Diplomacy is not fun right now, even if it's improving from patch to patch. Assassination, planting revolts etc could make the game really fun (like you could incapacitate an enemy hero with one of your assassins before taking a city but, if you fail, your own assassin is incapacitated and you take a relation hit).

Globally, things are improving: the engine is nicer, weapons now all have a purpose and I like the major quest areas. This game still needs major balance ajustments to have some longterm replay value. I think E: FE can become a great game, but there is still these major things to solve for it to be great.

I have to agree.  I have no need to defend my cities or build troops and there are plenty of heroes and summoned mobs to fill the ranks of my single army.  I am playing on the standard difficulty setting but it feels like easy.  Having to defend what I have got as well as explore/conquer more is more challenging and enjoyable as it was in 0.86beta.

I think champions are fine but you can have too many early on to make an uber stomping army with lots of magic weapons easily obtained.  Maybe if the number you could recruit was limited in some way e.g. number of cities controlled, or you had to spend a lot of influence as well as gold?  Then you would look to troops to fill your ranks.

Alternatively you could have hero and troop slots separate.  As a hero increased in level it could open up a hero slots into which you could recruit a second or even third at very high levels.  If only the highest ranked hero determined free slots then you would want to split your heroes as they leveled up to get more hero slots to recruit into.  Without heroes competing for those army slots then you would want to fill them up with troops to make your stack stronger. 

It could be that wandering monsters are attacking the AI now, and the AIs send out some units at a time and then they get killed, so they can't be used for wars.

My main issue right now is that, playing as Gilden, my sov is ridiculously powerful even in early game.  I walked up and destroyed, solo, a red con slag.  I had a few pieces of equipment, nice shield and helmet, and a good sword I found.  I took the defending path and various defensive traits to make him my tank.  Well, against a tough slag, he just soaked up most damage, counter attacked for damage, and either attacked or healed as needed. 

I just moved my small army to the back to power level them...

What are you playing against?  I regularly get attacked by waves of armies from empires when playing kingdoms.  I've even gotten attacked by another kingdom, despite strong diplomatic pluses, because their military was immensely stronger than my own.  They then launched powerful stacks in several directions targeting my main cities.  Was very well done, even as I wept.

Yes I agree, and don't want to get into a debate about this; but noticed that the man said his tank was overpowered because he was able to topup his health and keep him alive while he was tanking... which is a core gameplay mechanic. I don't think that using mana to heal your troops is an exploit.