It would be nice to level Hero's a bit quicker as most of mine only get to about lvl10 by the end of a game.  I don't ever get them up to the more interesting abilities in their chosen path

Andy.

Playing a game now with the slowest research and production settings, dense everything, medium map, 5 opponents, all custom, playing a custom Sovereign(Altar General for the exp. bonus), only Conquest and Diplo as win options.

Currently almost 700 turns into it, and most of my champs are between 8th to 10th level, primarily due to Adventurer's Guild. My main champ is just shy of 24th level, and has basically been fighting and questing non stop, His army, which has also been with him most of the game(Lightning Hammer Cavalry) and upgraded as tech became available, are just over 13th level.  Progress is excruciatingly slow experience wise, particularly as the monsters run out and only AI is left to fight with.

Haven't used quest maps at all yet, and the Destiny spell only a couple of times, though I plan to spam them a lot later on.

i don't think the XP rate we experience now is set in stone. it's based on the difficulty level of the encounter and modified by a percentage. the devs can easily adjust the rate (and probably will do so as the beta progresses) when half the posts on the forum are about too low XP.

that being said, my strategy for now is to concentrate on one character (which is usually the sov). they participate in all (or almost all) battles and eventually reach a level where they are super powerful. the main hero is typically a mage, since they seem to be the most powerful path at the moment. the assassin, warrior and defender lack scaling options, imo. they feel very useless towards endgame when companies of plate armored knights with high powered weapons can be easily mass produced. a destruction mage can still keep up in sheer destruction power (spamming flame darts and instant fireballs and stuff like that), or you go the support route and make them superior healers/debuffers. both routes are pretty solid.

my priority for champs is based on their spellbooks mostly - i wont be using them as commanders or combatants for most of the game anyway, so might as well pick the guys that fill gaps in my spell repertoire. it's fairly easy to get some of those support guys to level 5 or something to get their respective spellbooks into the interesting region. it's well worth the effort to get water 1-3 [or more] (mantle of the oceans, freeze, inspiration), earth 1-3 (hammers, set in stone, stoneskin, raise/lower land, tremor. natures grace), air 1-5 (propaganda, tutelage, cloud walk, tornado) etc etc. plus it's a lot more efficient to get the support spells on other characters. soul stealing their spellbook may seem like a smart move, but then you have to waste valuable sov levels on those utility spells. if you let the champs live, you can always assign them a small army later on and grind some backwater region (other nations territory also works - they rarely kill monsters so there's plenty of groups roaming around) to get their spell levels up. it costs a lot less overall XP to get some rookie from level 1 to 6 or something to get all the spells you want than it it so get another 3-4 levels on the sov just to fill that earth or water spellbook you stole from the champ.

commanders are amazing at this, for the simple reason that they only really need 2 points in commander (command and the prereq - leadership 1 i think) to earn their spot in the group and everything else can go into unlocking spellbooks for the strategic benefits. other champions tend to be dead weight when you give them an army to grind some level ups for them, but the commander can at least double the initial turn of one of his units, so he's practically worth an extra unit in the stack.

Removing the xp split is not the fix, but there is a problem. Heroes got too powerful in the late game of FE. Now, it's hard to justify paying the gold wage for a second hero after the first, as getting them to level 10 takes a long time. 

There needs to be more of an influx of xp opportunities.

INTERESTINGLY: Enemy armies seem to give more xp in LH than they did in FE, making war more viable as a leveling opportunity. 

If they don't modify the leveling system as in in LH, I may have to go back to FE, where leveling was easier and thus heroes more interesting...

IDEA: What if you could custom design your own heroes, and they were thrown into the random mix of offered heroes, kind of like sovereigns are now? Then you could at least make heroes that had some useful feature at level 3.

XP allocation does not make sense.   In many battles with a single champ, I've won without the champ making a move but still getting twice a much XP as the other units that did all the work.

My champs are way lower level than what they would be in FE.  I have weapons that I'll never be able to use due to level restriction.

From another post thought it my have some value here.

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1. I disagree.... It would open up new levels of strategy for a LOT of people who don't use them now like me.

2. There is no such thing as  "unfun exploits" in a SINGLE player game. if you like it you do it . If you don't , you won't.

3. To some like myself , units will aiways be useless.

4. That's the thing about variety , there is more then ONE way.

5. I disagree... It is less deeper with less choise.

6. I agree... You are very satisfied.

This reminds me of the MAYOR of NEW YORK CITY..... He wanted to BAN LARGE size soda cups for the good of eveyone's health. And taking AWAY your freedom of CHOISE to partisapate in a LEGAL activity.

Of course, I take the hisghest level heroes in MoM and pit them against the highest level monsters in MoM. Now, at a lower levels, there were nasty worms, and so on at every level below. Meaning that while a solo stack of heroe could be efficient, it was certainly not the sole way to win. I played with heroes stacks, mixed heroes/troops, and sometimes only troops. All ways were viable.

That gave a choice.

The current system removes a choice.

If you don't like hero stack, don't play them : if the game is rigthly balanced, you will find another way that suits your taste and is as efficient, possibly more for you. I just see no good reason to pin players on only one way of playing.

If you've played high level troops in FE or LH, you should know that they are as powerful as most high level (20) heroes, often more powerful. With possibly the exception of the fire mage stacked with all damage increases who may deal a heck of damage (but still usually remains fragile.) So, the way you like was already plainly playable.

Yves

I have removed the exp split just on the sovereign and its pretty nice and allows the exp to still flow pretty well and it prevents the super stacks of doom.  Overall my two copper is just remove the exp split on them and leave it on the other champions.  This makes it that you an have your sov and one other champ and your trained units and then the rest of the champs have to fly solo for max exp.

Despite what I wrote above, I decided on one more game by following what the game mandates : one army=one hero.

I played Pariden, large map, challenging, dense monsters, custom sovereign (fire/life mage.)

I had the luck to start close to Magnar whom I dispatched before turn 30.
This let me a large area at my disposal.
Anyway, by the end of the game, I controlled 80% of the map, where I actually had the opportunity to destroy monsters.
I also did not raze any lair, so that some monsters woud later spawn, artificially increasing the amount of available XP.

The results where interesting and absoutely confirm what I have defended before:

* I 'finished' the game at level 17 for my sovereign (not too bad) ; I eschewed any XP bonus giving skill as I know they are worthless. I did not have access to tutelage until late game. Of course, I tried to have her do the most difficult fights.

* My first hero ended up at level 14, the third at 10. I recruited Ascian whomI gave an army and he increased one level (he started from 11) ; my third hero was a commander and ended up at level 8. She (Jesselda) was so weak that I had to remove her from any combat (she'd die one time out of two) and stuff her in the adventurer's guild. Her army went to the next hero who took a level. I clearly had no room for any more heroes, so the last one also stayed home.

* Most heroes where useless in combat. Mostly, their sole purpose was to watch and accumulate experience. While they could participate, they were weak enough that they made no serious difference ; and placing them in range of enemy units did put them at risk of dying from an unlucky blow ; something trained units don't fear. This stayed true throughout the whole game, except for my sovereign (fire mage), who was in the end game a true power to recon with, say from level 8+ after getting fireball/savant ; but even then the power was severely checked for lack of mana. It would only slowly increase with the number of fire shards and mana availability. Still, the true underlying reason that this hero could really compete at high level was that she stacked a tremendous amount of enchantments (9) which for exemple increased her dodge by 30 or natural resistance by 110, making her impervious to many attacks.

* Armies were interesting to say the least. The typical army would be one hero and two units. It would later be one hero and three units, mostly for confort and to allow for one unit to rest while the other two fight. No more was ever needed . And units aways did at least 80% of the fighting job. I could verify this with the five armies I had roaming around, most of them with no magical support. These small armies would of course get upgraded as I'd get better equipment/increased sizes. Still, non upgraded troops from middle game stayed quite efficient by the end game. For exemple, a typical unit equiped with leather/boar spear (nothing fancy!) was attack 5 men 75, defense 8, hit point 160. It would survive deadly fights with its companion unit in the army. Of course, upgraded units with 37 attack and 6 men were vastly superior! But even Ascian, with three lowly units (4 men 52 attack/10 defense) would stay competitive.

* The only opponents that were difficult were dragons and haunts. Dragons were kept for the sovereign, as well as haunts if possible. The latter are very fast and can quickly overwhelm a small army such as I used, and I did not want to increase my army sizes. Dragons pose another challenge with their high attack and devastating breath. I would later change my sovereign army for a ranged attack army. Attack 125, defense 17, hit points 165, 5 men. Three of these, plus my sovereign (who dealt equivalent damage as one unit) would usually down a dragon in but one round.

I have yet to finish the game (I'd want to so the master quest), but am always pulled aside by stupid factions asking for suicide.

So what conclusions to a draw from this:

* Fire mages utterly dominate other mages. Other lines of mages should benefit the damage increases (for exemple, a slow could be increased in effect by the +xx% damage bonus the mage has.) They should have 'mass' spells to compete with fireball (mass haste, mass slow...)

* The current tree has the very detrimental consequence that non essential skills are never chosen. This is accentuated by the fact that one knows that the number of skills to choose will be severely limited (see the levels reached in that game)

* Hero XP stacking penalties must be removed. Heroes are weak enough on their own. No hero can compete (with the exception of the fire mage) with a good trained unit. My armies proved me that point numerous times. Even my second hero, an assassin maxed in the way of dealing damage, would always pale beside his units. True, he'd have some 'cool' abilities. But these are mostly fancy, and don't turn the tide of a combat. Even a critical hit wouldn't deal as much damage as a standard unit...

* Units dominate over heroes, by a long shot.

* Make the commander usefull! Or make him get XP by staying home. Granted that the command ability is superior. But he uses it once and is done for the combat...

* If with the XP penalty is removed, XP should be slightly increased so that clearing such a map would let one reach level 20+. I also think that, without increasing too much XP, it would be a good idea to give heroes 'free', but random skills in addition to what they gain now. Possibly one every two levels. This would have two effects:
- increase the heroes efficiency with more skills
- give the player the possibility to use skills he would never choose on his own
Possibly, the current scheme could be changed, so that skill choice is done as in FE (so a random selection of skills), with the bonus skill (every two levels) picked from the skill tree.

If I finish the master quest, I will post what army requirements were necessary. I think I'll need one more unit in my sovereign army, for a grand total of 5.

Yves

Inefficient against most monster units (your main opponents actually), where you have one unit with hundreds of HP. I still recognize that blizzard is a good spell. The casting time of 2 is however a strong limitation. Within that time, a large section of your army may be gone...

I agree, and this is simply not true as of now.

Yves

I think the old administrator abilities should be general, not commander.

Commander should have ability to enhance/reduce swarm, the old battle cry ability, guard, give bonuses to certain types of troops etc.

What if you picked from the tree on even levels, but got the old random perk selection on odd levels.

The thing I miss most about the random leveling system is that you'd end up with skills you normally wouldn't pick, and find out they were great. 

If, say, your sovereign starts with tactician, he'll never get to tactician II unless you choose Commander. Under the old system, though, you could eventually become Tactician II even if you were a mage.