Hello all, long time lurker and player, first time poster.
I've stuck this in the Support forum because there are a couple of what seem to be bugs - but there are also some general observations.
This game is great. I mean, really great. The challenge is nicely calibrated, it's got plenty of variety and I could design units and then get them killed by surprisingly powerful skeletons all day long. In fact, I do.
It's the heroes. Now, bear in mind I don't play Empire (yet), but my issues are not with the relative power of the heroes or anything like that.
It's with the fact that too many of them are unmemorable. I get to level up and my choices are between Female Tarthan Assassin Number 1, and Female Tarthan Assassin Number 2. Or, if I'm lucky, two flavours of Ironeer Defender, or a couple of Amarian Mages. Do you know what I'd like, occasionally? A Tarthan Governor. But there aren't any. Or an Assassin who isn't Tarthan. Or a Mancer with Life magic. There are some memorable heroes - the monsters, Ritressa, the Mancer with the Frostborn power, Gwenneth, the Amarian Beastlord, Bragni, the Tarthan (yes, an interesting Tarthan hero!) who can turn to lightning, and Ralle, the Mancer who can charge his weapons, but the rest are a bit identikit without a lot to make them stand out. The highlight of the rest is probably Jordur, who is, er, tall. I'm not asking for all of them to have unique powers (actually, I am, but I'm also realistic), but I am asking for a few changes so we don't have a mess of similar Tarthan Assassins and Ironeer Defenders that I'm simply not going to choose (unless I'm playing a Tarthan or Ironeer and, for RPG purposes, I've chosen to try to get heroes of my race) because their racial powers aren't that good and their heroes are dull.I'd like to get to a hero choice and have a hard choice between two, good, interesting useful ones that would really add something special to my forces.
Even worse, the hero Flurin, in FE, a Tarthan with a backstory involving her family being killed by a mage and who vowed to learn magic and who, hence, had three different magic paths and therefore was a good versatile heroine, was turned in LH into a Tarthan with a backstory involving her family being killed by a mage and who vowed to learn magic but who nevertheless has become an assassin like everyone else in Tarth, and who doesn't know any magic at all.
I wonder how Tarth functions when everyone seems to be an assassin. I guess that's why they have Rebels.
This gets me onto the "bugs", which are hero-related and minor. Flurin, I've mentioned. If you want to make her an assassin (please don't), can you change her backstory? It would be a shame, as her backstory was good, but could you at least remove the explicit pledge to learn magic? Not a lot in the grand scheme of things.
The other two I've found are for quest-related heroes. The surprisingly-useful Altarian free gift hero Wilbur came, at least to me, as a copy of the hero Janusk, right down to the quote, thus tempering my excitement because I already had turned down the original. Janusk is the only Altarian Defender available (these things matter to me a bit too much), so I like that Wilbur is also a Defender, but a little tweak would be nice to make him a bit different.
Similarly, Alexandros from the Path of the Martyr quest came to me as a copy of the hero Jordur The Giant. Now. granted, you're probably not going to turn down the Shrine of the Martyr, because it's good, but I felt sorry for Alex and I'm playing the hero, and I already felt bad about depopulating Anthys of a large proportion of the enchanting native wildlife and so I was a bit disappointed to get someone I turned down a pick or two ago instead. It makes the choice even easier. Now, if Alex were really cool and unique in some way, it would make that an interesting choice indeed.
I have a suspicion that this might be WAD - Alex and Wilbur could be generated as a copy of heroes already in the database - and I can understand that, but it would be nice if Alex at least had something more about him.
