Is betrayers + adventurer overpowering?

Combine it with cruel and we really speak overpowered. The you get one more sovereign point, one more attack, and 50% plus recruitment cost for heroes (that means nothing). It should not be possible to combine natural leader and cruel, it's just obvious so I'm sure the developers are on it.

And no, I don't think the trait itself is overpowered compared to other traits like starting with 1000 gold or long terms one improving your sovereign more as he levels up. Remember you need the tech for those heroes, and if you want it fast it means you have to forsake alot of other things, like the whole military tree.

 Edit: Read your post again. What did traitors do again? Might be an overpowered combination too. I was just commenting on the natural leader trait here, sorry. Is traitors the one that let you recruit both kingdom and empire heroes? Perhaps those shouldn't be allowed to be chosen together either, I don't want to jump to any conclusions on that one. But natural leader and cruel together is just exploiting the game. Of course I'd never make such a gamey hero myself.

Actually the way they calculate it, its not nothing. I believe natural leader -100% of units recruitment costs, cruel adds 50% to the recruitment costs. So, really you get heroes at half-price. At least when I took those two traits and it cost me something to recruit heroes. It still may be overpowered, but I haven't been able to tell yet.

He meant Betrayers, the faction ability, combined with Natural Leader from sovereign traits. The first allows you to recruit either Kingdom or Empire heroes. The second gives you -100% costs (free) when recruiting. Basically, it allows you to gobble up any loose heroes. Personally, while I think it's a very powerful combo, it requires you to reach the target before somebody else does and sorta forces you into pursuing the hero line so you get the most benefit you can from it.

I find that wealthy is better than natural leader IMO, but in this case its a very powerful combination, and boooring to play against...
Its basically what krax do, instead he just got tons of gold to do it instead.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

I've started playing this combination of late, and I don't find it overpowering.  It's basically a tradeoff: you have to build more scouting units at once to find champions, sacrificing useful early game turns spent on important buildings, which in turn affects research speed, army size, and even the level of heroes you can grab.  Understand, I'm not stating the combo is without value.  If it were, I wouldn't be using it. But while it seems so good, there are other combinations that are just as powerful in other ways--such as Pariden/extra mana/research.

Both traits are SNAP-broken.

Heroes are the most centralistic aspect of this game. Granting your sovereign those two traits should be very expensive towards the building of your sovereign.

Personally, I think both traits should be rewritten:

• Betrayers Trait: Allows you to recruit from opposing alignment at +50% cost.
• Leadership Trait: Allows you to recruit heroes at -50% cost.

Examples:

You are a kingdom faction sovereign and have two heroes standing before you, one from each alignment, each selling their services (normally) for 100 gildars: 

If you have the Betrayers Trait:

• The Kingdom Hero can be bought for 100 gildars
• The Empire Hero can be bought for 150 gildars

If you have the Leadership Trait:

• The Kingdom Hero can be bought for 50 gildars
• The Empire Hero cannot be bought

If you have both traits:

• The Kingdom Hero can be bought for 50 gildars
• The Empire Hero can be bought for 100 gildars

Still VERY powerful traits, imo, but reasonable considering the current setup... and Krax doesn't even hurt that much since he starts off with 1000 gildars.

That's the way I see it anyways...

I agree with this change for betrayer, even if they leave natural leader the same. A +50% could even be +25%, but some gameplay testing is needed to know what the correct balance would be, beta 5 anyone.

I dunno. While heroes are a major aspect, I tend to find I only need 1 or 2 who I can focus leveling and equipment on. Extra heroes just sit around in garrisons with an Adventurers Guild and/or Arena. I sometimes use them to respond to AI armies when my main heroes are too far off and I don't have a teleport effect handy, but the AI never sends armies that are too powerful even by turn 250 or so, at least not in my experience with their waves of ill-equipped militia (Challenging difficulty too). Maybe that's just because the below Hard AI can be defeated with a stiff breeze right now (or at least in the previous patch), but I don't see having the possibility to grab more heroes for free to be gamebreaking. Natural Leader could instead be spent on a bonus which allows for better early leveling, which helps lead into the snowball effect of a megachampion crushing towns/armies under their heels and netting you sovereigns anyway.

EDIT: Nix that. Giving the new patch a run and it's very very easy to raise the levels of multiple champions now. It may need to be toned down then.

This seems to be changed now. Natural leader is no longer a talent. It is now called adventurer and is a profession. So you can still combine adventurer + betrayers to recruit as many heroes as you can find at no cost but with a profession pick. Hmmm this is a little better but still seems possibly overpowered to me...

No configuration is overpowered or underpowered.  It's all how you want to play, and Stardock should leave these options available to each player.  Want more of a challenge, or less?  Good: that's your choice.

Here. Here.  You can't use "overpowered" and "custom" in the same sentence in this forum.

I have to admit its hard to pick between summoner and adventurer for me. They are both fun choices! But I still think adventurer - betrayer is the most powerful combo!

IMHO it was overpowered but is no longer with the recent changes of armour values, costs, etc..  But still very good, especially with the "many heroes" setup. Under 0.992 and higher difficulty settings it's nearly impossible to win with Heroes alone.

Good work of the balancing team!

Hmm. Challenge accepted

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Ahemm, I forget to mention: Ironman, no reloading except after crashes...

Good luck!

moan moan moan

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

It's an entirely single player game.  Either something is game breaking or not.  "Overpowered" is nonsense.   This isn't SC2.  

This kind of combination gives so many advantages that makes hard to start a new game without it.

It is like Master Scouts. Once you get used to move at full speed, it is hard to go back to the penalty movement...

And now I'm trying Enchanters...The arcane monolith spell is an outpost-creator, the scrying pool is a builidng for +1 essence in each city (that means enchanted hammers and later may change it for another spell)

So a faction with betrayers + Master Scout + Enchanters  (+ penalty trait like No archers, wich eventually is no problem) can be an OP faction.

Give this a Sov with Aventurer (free recruiting) + Earth (to start hammering) and you can get a great advance in heroes, cities and outposts...

I know that the idea is to replay with different styles and factions, but once you check the best combinations...

Betrayers and Adventurer is not a very good combination at higher difficulty levels.  It depends too much on chance.  Sure, if you see Thannata, and manage to research the tech to hire her before someone else kills/hires her, you get a huge boost.  But on ridiculous, the AI expands very quickly, and knows where the heroes are, and beelines for them.

In my last playthrough, I had "Betrayers" and "Wealthy", not because I was going for the combo, but because people challenged me to win with standard Karavox on ridiculous.  How much did "Betrayers" help?  A tiny bit.

First of all, I never saw a high level hero that I could hire.  I hired my starting level 1 hero, a level 3 hero that was close to my starting location, and a level 3 who was in an impossible to reach without fighting area.  There were also three level 5 heroes who ended up deep within my borders, so that I could keep them out of AI hands.  At some point, while I was engaged in a five front war, I hired two of them.  I did not bother with the third, despite having plenty of cash.

On high difficulty levels, heroes just do not do so much, unless they are really high level. My 'main' heroes ended the game at levels 23, 21, and 19.  The secondary heroes led troops and barely reached levels 9-10.  Sure they were useful, but not very influential.

In .992, ridiculous has been made more ridiculous.  I would say to the point of being a chore to play.  Betrayer+Adventurer would be a inefficient combo.  Heroes need to be power leveled to matter when your opponent is rushing everything in one turn and can put 8-9 traits on units, doubling traits as it feels the need.  You cannot powerlevel too many heroes, and the hero techs are a waste of research otherwise.

So... Effective at lower difficulties? Yes. Overpowered at high difficulties. No.

This is nonsense, you CAN have "overpowered" things even in a singleplayer game, its just not really a big deal.

That said, people like me would want a major stroke of balance going through the game, not  because I can't enjoy it without, just because I don't want to feel gimped because I did not pick betrayers.

Ofcourse in this case I don't think its "overpowered", its a strong synergy, but I might as well have picked Altar and produced Henchmen for most of the champions, and then level a couple of champions as mages.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Damn this is harder than expected on ridiculous, especially when surrounded by dragons Don't have the patience to find the right map either, so atleast there are some maps where you can't solo the map with your sovereign anymore. (Still, I did get to level 6, before I was surrounded by ogre, dragon, river skags, and some coalstones mage-o-mancer).

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

I think the same thing is being expressed in different ways.  The point being made is that accusations of an overpowered starting combo are ridiculous in context, because they aren't a big deal.  Everyone should be able to choose combos that are under- or overpowered, according to a mix of traits, professions, map sizes, races, AI difficulty, opponent choices and AI difficulty, etc.  There will certainly be large variations, but there's nothing wrong with any of it. Everybody should be allowed to play as they see fit in a singleplayer game, without someone saying "No, you can't do that, your starting combo is too powerful!" hanging over their shoulder.