Wow! With one fell swoop you took us back to the days of WoM, reversed several months of game design and development by very experienced professionals and solved the game's biggest problem (which many of us do not consider a problem, but OK)!

You should become  a game designer! (no, seriously, give it a shot)!

tbh the easiest solution is just NOT MAKING champions steamroll everything fast, also reducing the leveling helps

all these things actually work, im trying in my modded games and its perfect

also another important thing forcing to go champions is the research

going into magic is cool

going into civilization is a must, at least halfway or so

warfare is just not cool as other trees (thats why i added crafted stuff in there to have more motivation to research it)

Turns out I have designed dozens of published games. And thanks for the sarcastic response.

Trained units are weak in comparison with sovereign/champions. I will not build them even in a separate queue. I don't need weak units. At first trained units should be improved a lot: higher base stats, higher weapon/armor stats, lower production/resource costs.

mdonais does have a point. champions become all powerful pretty quickly. i think the only thing limiting them right now is the amount of mana they have and the weak weapons you find limiting their damage potential. other than that i still have managed to win about 4 full games on challenging with no units built at all besides pioneers.

As I have said in many other threads purporting to "fix" this problem, what you perceive as an issue with Champions being OP is really a problem with the AI.  They don't need to dramatically alter the structure of the game, or hamstring and nerf champions.  They need the AI to be able to use Champions properly.

To compare it to chess, the AI knows how all the pieces work, but doesn't understand how to use the pieces together and doesn't understand how to use its pieces to best advantage.  What you're seeing is the effect of the AI not being able to recognize that using its queen like its a pawn is stupid.

Champions should be all-powerful, they should obliterate low-level troops.  You want weak champions, go play WoM, seriously.  That was a game where champions were balanced against units and guess what people complained about? That's right, "Champions are pointless".

In FE, the counter to a high level Champion is another high level Champion, not freshly trained units.  You want to play RPS?  There are thousands of games out there that provide a RPS.

What's really needed is buffing troops vs heroes in the mid-late game.   There needs to be an RPS relationship (with the usual game exceptions) between troops, monsters, and heroes in the mid/end-game.

Hey Seanw feel free to link to your mod. I am interested in trying mods after I play this thursday's new beta 5.

Everyone else thanks for the support. 

Mike.

I have to agree with the OP on this, although heroes should be strong they quickly become gods among mere sheep. I definitely get to the point very quickly where I just use my hero to solo dragons and empires... (on challenging, I do not believe in cheating AI's )

As a personal preference I would go with seanw3's answer to this problem. Making the levels matter more and making the experience required much higher. Meaning your simple units can catch up a little better.

Secondly, as an alternative, I think that having units gain levels and allowing you to choose how their stats are shaped. Or possibly pre-define various level curve styles might be interesting, although probably unnecessary for the majority of players.

In response to ins2... Since I am not a game designer I am going to look at this disagreement from a different angle.

FE is considerably more open to the modding community, or at least that is the direction the game aims to go from what I can tell. Also, being a single-player only game, it allows for drastic modifications by the user-community with relative ease. 

This being said, I believe mdonis and a lot of the user community that does dislike a number of the current features will have the opportunity and the community around them to make changes that will not be made by the game development team. If you look in the OP post, he does not say that game developers should fix this problem. He implies it, but he is not asking the game devs to alter their timelines and change some core functionality. He is making a suggestion towards a problem which he perceives.

What I believe many users on this forum would be happy with is a well done game. Maybe it has some glaring flaws in their minds, but it is rounded, thought out and has a solid overarching design behind it. Which currently FE is shaping up to be. But, they would request that in addition to this there be ample ways to modify this game. Which currently the game devs have spent a lot of time making sure modifications fit easily into the game and are not immensely complex to add. It is my hope, that we will see a development kit of types, allowing the community to polish off the game in various directions that we desire.

I don't really have a problem with winning by OP heroes.  Heroes are a big part of the attraction of this genre game.  There are sci-fi space & historical 4x games, with no heroes or nerfed ones, so I'd vote for biasing the fantasy-themed games toward heavy-hitting heroes as a rare favor to whoever likes them, instead of turning the game into a near-clone of a space game with magic substituted for technology.

EWOM had a troll warrior with a special that did increased damage to single units, which was deadly to melee heroes. It was like an opposite of overpower. The troll warrior packs were deadly. Wish I could remember the name of that special.

Sean or HF - mod that in please! Would love to see some mobs that specialize in hero killing.

I love this game so much AND I understand that everyone has the choice of what to create and how to play/role play

BUT

Heroes are definitely obscenely overpowered. 

In my latest game I am playing Lady Irane of the Tarth. I have created several units solely for defense (they have never left or even needed to defend their cities). Lady Irane, all by her lonesome, has been my only attacking unit and I have systematically obliterated every unit I encountered. I have taken down my nearest rival, Magnar, city by city and just wiped them from the face of the world.

Of course, I have gotten some great drops and lots of levels by now but it just seemed too easy. I am not necessarily complaining but I can see how a lot of people may feel put off by this and/or never create regular units at all.

Great heroes should be forged through great trials and tribulations and refined with mighty gear and a +5 my mamma gunna kick yo arse with this here rollin pin sonny boy enchantments!

Hopefully this will be balanced well enough for all to be happy.

But seriously, this game has grown so much and is maturing so nicely through all this time and I can't help to feel so proud of what it has become!

THANK YOU BRAD, DEREK, and CO.

You guys are the best. Good Luck, God Bless, and get to work and never stop making these great games!!!

I curently play my games without troops. Saves the queue slot for things that actaully matter.