Procipinee's history includes the following quote: "Daughter of Amarian III, Queen Procipinee of New Pariden remains the greatest channeler of the New Age." Amarians blood trait gives them different bonuses for each one of each shard type they hold, for additional hit points, initiative, spell resist, and spell mastery. Pariden, being a magical powerhouse faction, has starting traits of Adepts (harvest shards as soon as the game starts) and Enchanters (access to magical equipment and books that allow heroes to learn schools of magic they do not already know).
Procipinee's starting traits, besides Amarian Blood, are:
- Air Apprentice
- Life Apprentice
- Water Apprentice
- Attunement (+2 mana per season)
So given all of this, it's reasonable to assume that Pariden will be a magic based faction in game and that Procipinee will level with an eye towards maximizing all of these magical underpinnings.
In my current game I was at war with Pariden and drastically overpowered them. I demanded Procipinee's surrender, and got it. Awesome. My magical kingdom just got another powerful magical hero.
Umm... not so much.
274 turns into the game, on Challenging, Procipinee's traits, other than her base ones, when she joined me:
Level 9
- Bloodthirsty: +25% ATK vs. damaged enemies
- Strength: +20 Weight Capacity
- Path of the Assassin
- Spell Resistance: +10 Spell Resist
- Water Disciple
- Charge: +3 Moves on first turn of combat
- Air Disciple
- Healer: +1 Army Health Regeneration per season
- Broken Spirit
- Merchant 1: +2 Gildar per season
- Path of the Warrior
She was wearing leather and carrying a normal old staff. She had 10 ATK & 6 DEF.
Suffice it to say, her leveling certainly looks less than optimal. Most of her innate strengths are wasted on this build at level 9. Notice, no Path of the Mage.
I'm not sure if this is the AI not leveling their heroes properly or if she just had shit luck in the random trait selection department. Either way, something should probably be done to ensure that heroes, and Sovereigns especially, develop according to their lore and character. At least moreso than Procipinee did here.
Potential solutions:
- Improve the level up AI
- Maybe build required talents into each lore AI Sovereign (remove the random element at certain key levels, like 4 with the Paths).
- Have the lore based Sovereigns not get random choice, but have a prebuilt path that they follow when the AI levels them.
No idea what would be the best, but Procipinee, as a vassal, doesn't even equal a freshly recruited level 9 hero, because her leveling lacks any clear direction.