yeah i agree that they can be a bit weak. depends a lot (too much?) on the map setup . with lots of quests and dense monsters, you'll pick the level 5 & 7 guys up early enough for them to be relevant. the level 9 guys seems a bit redundant, though.

on the default settings, there's probably not enough fame to unlock them until late in the game.

more XP for higher level battles seems reasonable. wouldn't break the game if killing dragons and titans yields 500 XP or something. there aren't that many dragons and titans on most maps anyway (unless playing a really huge map - in which case it's still not a problem if some of your heroes get into the "ungodly powerful" stage of their progression - it's a a fairly epic game on huge maps, after all )

I find the lv3 heroes to be the worst by far. By the time they show up I have leveled Sov and first hero to lv 3-5 and because they started lv 1 they have more traits.

I'd agree that more traits for high lv heroes would be good but I don't like potential, especially when everyone gets it.

When everyone has potential, No one does.

That's why it should be remove, it is a boring and pointless trait and yet it is must-have.

Now, some heroes do not have potential and you can't use them. Once i used a 7lvl hero in my game. My sov had 7 as well, and both of them started to farm xp. When my sov was level 15, the other one was level 11 .....

But if one plays low difficulty then it is true, nothing really matters since it is hard to loose anyway and you do not have to pick up xp perks. Otherwise, it is no choice ...

Finished another game right now (0.90) as Gilden. This time I walked around with my souvereign and another hero despite the xp split mechanic.

My souvereign was a Warrior and made it hardly to level 12 before the game was literally over. I played on a large map with default settings (except A.I. on challenging and only 3 enemy fractions around). My souvereign managed to be not too much of a burden (found some nice weapons and armor), although the regular troops kept to be much stronger and do more damage through the whole game.

The other hero was a Mage and if enemy forces had archers or the like, she often died and put another injury in her growing collection of shame. Thanks to the late game elixier I could at least heal her later on.

As nearly half of the map was Gilden territory, my cities rushed one after another to level five, gildar came out of my ears and mana out of my nose and the research trees were finished, I did not feel like steamrolling the map but decided to go for a quest victory instead. With my heavy armored late game units the boss fight was a cakewalk but guess who was the only one that died on that legendary day? Right, my lousy level 12 souvereign.

So once again, champions didn't feel legendary and rather sucked! To be fair, with more experience availiable in 0.91 this might improve a bit as I had high level items in my inventory that would have been nice to use, although in this game I had no idea how to climb up to level 17 or 20.

1. please remove the stupid XP split mechanic taken over from FE, it does no longer make sense
2. please reduce the cool down for champion's special abilities to make them more fun to play and get them closer to regular troops
3. do something about Mages being so vulnerable to distance attacks, maybe rethink the whole armor profiency distribution in class paths

I think I could at least make use of 2-4 active heroes then (-> in 1 or 2 main armies). However I would still prefer not to be "rewarded" with another champion as soon as I reach a certain amount of fame. Allow me to recruit new heroes whenever I want to spend some fame on it and give access to a wider choice. As the later heroes all end up as unrest reducing clowns anyways, I for one would only recruit Commanders later on or save up my fame until I can get another really ass-kicking guy.

Or replace her by 6-soldiers top line mage unit with attack over 80? All problems solved.

Who needs heroes that need to be baby-sited all the time?

Totally agree, this would be ideal.

If you want to reach high levels, and wallow in XP, play a custom Altar build, and focus on the xp traits for your heroes and built units. Building henchmen will give you control over how your fame is spent, can always slow down another heroes arrival. Current game(turn 600ish) my Mage General Sov is level 30, with a second mage at 15, and a half dozen other heroes between 7-11. Also a couple of high level henchmen for trainer and healing as well as several governors. Granted, I've been milking the game a bit, waiting to get to the end of the tech tree before tackling the 4 Wildlands or any epic level quests. I've avoided war as well, reckon I'll go train my new army (6 champion lancers, decked out) on the remaining lairs and wildlands before I decide on winning. Have never stacked heroes together, only henchmen.

There's still a lot of xp on the map(medium, dense everything, epic, challenging world, 5 normal custom AIs, no modding), so I could easily get several of the other heroes up to reasonable levels.

I really think everyone should have access to henchmen, or maybe even be able to customise incoming heroes.

Your conclusion doesn't follow from your evidence.  

I don't think heroes are overpowered either.  I think that the balance, especially after the .91 expereince buff, will be just about right.  I usually play a hero heavy game (meaning few armies) on higher difficulty levels and go just fine.  I also never take the potential traits (although I usually grab Knowledge for mages, since it's pretty good bang for the buck).  By the end of the game my sovereign is soloing most battles and only calling on armies or other heroes for the very hardest fights (say, the master quest final fight).  

I don't know why people seem to want heroes to be overpowered.  I just want the hero-focused empire to be viable.  And I think with the last few (and next) patch, it finally is.  

yeah i agree. they are pretty fine now. the XP was initially set too low, then bumped up twice (so far) and is now almost back to the XP value in FE; the only real difference right now is that XP gain in FE was (i think) independent of the relative strength of the involved armies, which was changed in LH so you don't gain full XP when killing weak encounters with a strong army etc.

the change in 0.91 will probably compensate this difference to some extent. you'll still get lower XP when killing stuff that is too easy, but on the other hand you will now also get more XP for defeating stuff that is "too hard". seems more reasonable than the old system in FE.

he mentioned a hero centric playstyle, which suggests that he probably soloes monster lairs with his sov, not AI armies. in my experience, that's quite possible. 

I think that is a problem of the expert+ difficulty settings, because the AI gets such huge bonuses that they break the balance of the game. In my opinion the game is ok on normal, challenging and hard and if the AI would be better at the game such bonuses would not be needed.

Agreed with general posters' ideas here. Allow me to spend fame, instead of being forced to choose at fame increments.

Maybe as part of the Aeromancy trait, mages can get an innate +25 ranged dodge?  TBH, I don't often have problems with archers sniping my mage, so it's not something I've thought about.

Following my post above, just cleaned up the last few lairs, the Arena quest, the Dragon statue quest, and three wildlands, (boss only in two of them, bunch of haunters with Morian in the third). Maybe 2 dozen fights in total.

With a dedicated trainer henchman, and the Sov as well as a henchman mage, I was able to get the Sov to 36, and both henchmen are 26, from 11 and 8. Troops are all 20s. A lot of the fights my Sov was getting close to 400 points. These were Deady-Epic mostly, couple of Strongs.

Haven't touched quest maps, except for two that I found, and I have used maybe 4000 points of Destiny's Insight, a lot of that was to level the trainer. Had to stop fighting to go buy spellbooks for the two henchmen, as they started running out of choices worth taking pretty quickly.

Still have a map full of AI factions, as well as the Master quest to go; that's a lot of levels available from a medium map. I'm guessing even with the split, adding a dedicated trainer to an army will mitigate at least some of the bleeding, and on a larger map shouldn't really be an issue, especially with the upcoming xp increase for fighting higher level armies. If you want high levels, make that first hero or your Sov a Commander, and max the training route. I didn't add the trainer to my force until my Sov was already 30, next game he'll be there from the get-go. Also wasn't using the Heroic trait on this build, leaving still more XP that could have been grabbed.

I'll try this out with a non Altar build after .91, and see how a multi-hero stack progresses, with multiple trainers.