Why not allow for very powerful characters, but make them very rare. So you won't get one every game, and if a powerful character does appear in your game, there's no guarantee that he won't end up choosing to work for your enemies; but if you do get a fabled hero working for you, then boy are your enemies in for a rough ride

This has a couple of advantages:

Balance isn't so important. As they're not in every game, it doesn't matter that they are overly powerful. Unfair and unbalanced stuff has happened all through human history, so I don't see the problem with unbalancing uber-heroes appearing every now and then.

They won't negate armies. As they won't appear in every game, and not every faction will have access to one. So the bread and butter army building is still important.

It will make games more interesting, increasing the illusion of emergent narrative, and giving Bard (and now Kael?) more opportunities to tell stories with the game.

Kael has done some kinda similar mechanics in FfH2... there's a barbarian hero who appears (every game? early on-ish?) who really isn't very balanced. Any nearby Civs are likely to get crushed. But again, this increases the scope for different games to be different from each other, rather than depending on the same tactics everytime.

Could be implemented as part of a system of catch-up-mechanics. ie, if a hero does appear, then there's a chance he'll have an "hero to the underdog" trait, and go work for a faction that is doing badly. trying to save the day, etc. While this would get annoying if it happened every time (super heroes constantly spawning and stopping you win!), it would be fine if it was only a subtle preference.

Would be a good thing to semi-outsource to the community, creating a roster of fabled heroes and magicians. Give them back stories and interesting traits and preferences. Each faction could have a specific hero that has a very small chance of appearing each game. Each faction could also have a antagonist who has a small chance of appearing and will work for an opposing faction. Some fabled heroes could be strongly tied to a sequence of quests (some equivalent of raising an undead lord, or whatever Elemental's equivalent is! I guess Dragon's kind of fit in here). Some heroes could be tied to other heroes, so if one faction randomly gains access to a special character, then that increases the chance of other characters making themselves available... ie, if some ungodly wraithlord pledges allegiance to one faction, then there's a 33% chance that a paladin will step in to help you defeat it... but not always.... so you'd better get creating a mighty army to stop the wraithlord unleashing hell. (obviously replace wraithlord and paladin for Ele's equivs). Some of them could have access to equivalents of FfH2's "world spells" - spells that you can cast once which have a really large effect on the world. Some heroes could be bound to a single city and unable to move, etc etc etc.

Again, I go back to the balance argument. If they are rare, then they don't have to be balanced. They won't play an important part in your strategy (until you get one) as you only have a small chance of getting one in any game. But if you do get one, then they can be all kinds of powerful, and hence not be a disappointment.

Orthus...  You're thinking of Orthus.  You're forgetting about the Dragon that usually appears about 60 turns later too.

Me and my cousin used to do RP Games of FFH.  We would take the Civs and Leaders he used, and just throw them out.  No modding involved here, but we'd ignore that they actually existed, and trade it in for our own Lore and what-not.  This is a semi-important preface.

Orthus very commonly killed one of us, forcing us to restart games in order to continue having fun.  That became un-fun, very very quickly.  Orthus' Axe also got us killed many times, and when one of us had it, it ended games very quickly, for the AI's and ourselves, consequently.

Unbalancing factors, while they do work, are hit or miss events.  Either it works, or it doesn't, and you'll never be able to tell which without just playing the game and see.  While it adds replayability, and a random element to the game, it takes out the "Strategy" portion of Turn-Based Strategy.  Your 'Strategy' either becomes, "Get the unbalancing factor and use said factor to decimate all who stand before me," OR, "KILL THAT SONOVA BITCH!  KILL HIM!  FIRE FIRE FIRE!"  See how that's a problem?

Better in my opinion to make Heroes more scarce, and beef them up.  A lot, but not to be army-killing machines.  To take an Army, they should need the support of an Army of their own at their back.  Spellcasters, being the most rare of them all, should be able to consistently beat Champs to a bloody pulp...  Until the Champ gets in their face, and then they should be screwed.

Champions, as the name implies, should be Paragons of Physical Prowess and Skill.  Equals in these areas should be few and far between.  Barring Administrative-type Heroes, each Realm on a map should have relatively fair potential to get maybe 2 or 3 Champs apiece, to prevent a Champ-Super-Stack being created by anyone.  Further, Fallen Champs should only side with Fallen Realms, and vice versa, to add just a little more difficulty to procuring Champions.  Lastly, Champs should get abilities to facilitate the idea of them being Much-Better-Than-Average Warriors.  Their strength should not come solely from just plain being that much stronger, it should require an Intelligent Strategic and Tactical element, hence the abilities.  And only a few, but they should be chosen from a list, based on a trait the Champion has.  Traits would be your basic, "I help this kind of puny military unit," type of thing.

That's my 9 Pieces of Eight.

Edit:  Oh, and yes, in short, I want kick-ass Champs.

Orthus is an interesting case - in older versions of FfH, which are what you seem to recall, he used to be a far-too-powerful game-ender for whoever he spawned next to. In later versions, after some changes to barbarians I think, he somehow became an easy kill - basically a walking piece of equipment which swings the game in favor of whoever he spawns near, since getting his axe is so useful (not to mention the massive xp the unit that kills him gets). Either way, he didn't work very well for balance purposes; fun and random, adds to replayability, but he either kills you or makes the game too easy if you get the axe - but couldn't there hypothetically be a middle ground between those two extremes?

In other words, I don't think such random events are inherently imbalanced, even though Orthus happened to be - surely it's possible to make an event challenging without making it game-ending, and also rewarding without it making the game far too easy. For example, one of Orthus's problems was that his base strength wasn't much better than normal units, but he was a hero (and thus gained free xp each turn). So if you spotted him just after he spawned, two or three regular units could take down a level 1 Orthus, a small price to pay for his axe and several levels of xp for the surviving unit. But if he first wandered the wilds for a few dozen turns before showing up at your city, he'd have 7 promotions (levels) and could single-handedly take down your entire civilization. As just one change, if he got no free experience but higher base strength, you're looking at a more consistent and balanced Orthus event already. Now fix how sometimes he shows up alone and sometimes with a horde of normal barbarian orcs to support him, and so on. In the end if you got the balance just right, Orthus would be a problem most players could handle if they focused on killing him, but challenging enough that they would have to focus on him. Same thing for the reward: scratch the unique magic axe that makes Orthus far more powerful, but is even more overpowered if you get it and remains a significant advantage throughout the game. Instead he could just give xp to the killing unit, maybe a gold reward too - a useful temporary advantage, but not game-winning, and something that other players can get from normal exploring and barbarian killing.

So if we balance this right, there might be a game where you got Orthus and had to focus on killing him, but your friend didn't and was able to instead send his military units out hunting normal barbarians, and the two of you ended up in the same place in the end - short a few dead units, but with some extra gold and experience for the units that survived. Perhaps you lost a few more units to Orthus but got a bit more xp for the one that lived, whatever, just saying that such a random event could be more or less balanced; that is, not something that significantly effects your chances to win, but just fun and adding to replayability.

Or to put it another way: random events don't necessarily detract from the "strategy" of a game, indeed what is strategy without the need to adapt to the unexpected? You just have to make sure that those random events are something you can adapt to, not so imbalancing that they decide the game regardless of what you do.

I can win every game no matter how many AI, on what level with NO units besides my heroes. A may use a summon to make it go faster.

If you think "end game" the heroes are useless, and "weak" we are using them vastly different. I can tell you, I assume SD to nerf the heck out of the heroes, and the buffs in 1.1 or slightly later. You are using buffs, correct?

If you get a hero, jacked essence, jacked gear... and buffed. ROFLSTOMP. If you ain't going against a dragon, another jacked hero, or a catapult you should win everytime. If you lose, reload and try again. You CAN NOT lose twice in a row. LOL

PS-- No I won't tell you the step by step strategy in the post, but if anyone needs help on hero strategies PM me. I will give clues. I won't post here, so I don't have people screaming "SPOILER!". And I don't want the strat nerfed yet. (Although I am sure it will be...)

I see your point and why you would say that. But trust me, there is virtually no way to lose a hero, if done right.

Here is ONLY way I can EVER see losing a hero. And you guys will say "no... what about such n such???" Trust me, with my gear, buffs, strat.. it doesn't matter.

In last 15 games in Ridiculous, I lost My soveriegn once (some accidental attack I made on a stack.. can't remember how.. but it was early game, And I got smoked. Game Over. Score. 7. LOL) I also lost Janusk maybe once, And a couple of scrub heroes maybe two times total. I RELOADED TO GET JANUSK AND SOVEREIGN BACK OF COURSE. But scrubs??? Bah, I will make another one, inside of 10-20 turns total.

Here is How I died. Only way possible really. First, They have to get first attack. If they don't you can annihilate any dangerous opponenets before they attack... So First, they need to attack first. Second, They need to have a Dragon (they never do... so forget that, it is hypothetical), or Catapults, Or a hero with High Int/and Essence.

With Dragon, he can use his spell thingy on you and one shot you. I think it does 50 true damage or something.. SO any hero is toast (well, not counting AI heroes on Ridiculous. Today I saw a lvl 2 AI hero with 96 hp IN MY CITY, NOT THEIRS. he was attacking). Assuming you have 20-26 HP like my high lvl heroes do (never more) You can USUALLY survive One, MAYBE two shots from a catapult. Assuming your armor is nice (legendary is all I use, Don't need that uber stuff, master heavy or whatever it called).

With Catapult, He (or more likely the 5 of them), the AI loves to attack en masse with the pesky mangonels. So anyway, It will ALMOST always target an archer, or a summons. If your hero has bow, it doesn't recognize as archer. So You get usually about 2-3 turns to kill the catapult. This can suck when they have 400+ HP EACH. But it is possible, If you don't have a summons or archer group with you (wtf? no archers with you... zzz. you are on your own, maverick!) Then Maybe the catapult targets you. He can hit for 25, but will usually do 9-15. Or Miss. This is a POSSIBILITY though rare way to get smoked

As to another hero. Assuming AI is smart with their use (never is) he will do some uber DPS spell. I seen some that hit for like 15 or so. And if he does it twice, you dead.

Those are ONLY ways I see you dying. By the way. Why would anyone make their hero melee? I never have my dudes with anything but a longbow. If your armor is 70.... a lowly unit with 4 attack can still damage you on a counterattack... why risk it. What would you do against Sions, (insta-gib) or those elementals that counter for 3x their damage?

Morale of the story, Only put bows on them. You Win. End of story, no reload. unless you have horrible luck. I haven't reloaded for lost hero in at least 4-5 games. I did just reload today to NOT take a city, because AI had 12 cities, I wanted all of them. I took a good one, King was there. He attacked immediately after, so I had to kill him, he wouldnt retreat. Lost the other 11 cities. Poof! Had to reload and bypass that city. LOL. how lame.

I think it needs far better heroes. They don't need to be overpowered, but they should have more flavour than they do now. In Age of Wonders you can customise your heroes quite a lot. They usually start puny and don't really do anything besides a basic melee attack, but you can build them up however you want. You can give them archery or healing or turn undead or any number of abilities. And/Or you can give them magic and then they can cast any spells you can.

They still could die easily in battle but they were worth the cost of hiring, and it was worth putting in the effort to level them up without letting them die. By the end game they could be super powerful which I thought was a nice way of stopping the end of the game becoming too tedious. I also thought it was the perfect reward and incentive for doing well through the whole game. If you don't play well, you lose your heroes and have to fight the difficult end stages of the game with just armies made from the basic units. If you have played well though, you are rewarded by having high level heroes that can make a huge difference at the end.

You can say the exact same thing if you go completely the other way, and have massive uber-heroes that can level everything ... why build squads or research military tech when all battles are just decided by a few "supermen" heroes?

I think that a balance is needed. Those really strong spellcasters should be vulnerable to archers for example so that the other side has a chance of winning battles too, otherwise why build archers if spellcasters always win the day?

It needs to be more of a 50/50 thing. Actually, in my opnion, this is one area which the original game design did well, matching hero strength vs army unit strength. You can shell out 2k gilder outfitting a 12th level spellcaster hero, and that would be roughly the same as a level 5ish horse archer squad which 8 times as many men. It's possible to make very strong squads by shellling out 400 or so crystal, but this is a fairly limited resource, and you won't have more than a handfull of these if you go that route .. and I always make crystal a priority, even over shards.

There should be a 50/50 balance between heroes and squads in a strategy game, otherwise one or the other will or become useless making everything associated with that unit (tech research for example) useless. I kind of like the rock, scissors, paper theory of game-combat. There's plenty of ways to make this work in a mideaval fantasy setting with spells (powerful attack), horses (speed), armor (good defense but slow), arrows (ranged attack), melee weapons (short ranged attack). Everything should have a good nemesis, and a well-balanced army should have an advantage over any army that is lop-sided or a one-unit show.

I think elemental has a way to go at this point as archers & spellcasters are at the top of the chain making everything else useless (they don't have a good enough nemesis or a rock-paper-scissors balance). They balanced the "hero-vs squad" right, but not the "type vs type" correctly. Horses should be much faster on the tactical map for one thing, 3-square movement for horses vs 2-square for non-mounted is frankly not realistic or logical. Horses should have at least 6 square movement on tactical board, and a horse lancer (say) should be a threat to spellcasters and archers by turn 3 of tactical combat if not killed or slowed somehow before then. Macemen with shields should have much more missile protection than those without shields, but should be more vulnerable to two-handed type weapon squads who in turn are more vulnerable to archers. It would be nice if there was some magic trinkets that could be bought for squads that improve their magical defense against spellcasters, so that one spellcaster can't wipe out 6 squads with low HPs. Cloaks of missile protection for spellcasters would help them vs archers, but they should still be vulnerable to melee units (rock paper scissors).

Also, it would actually be nice if morale had some effect in tactical battles other than the occasional confusion, right now it has no impact at all. Melee units just charge to their death? they should disengage at some point based upon their morale vs HP losses (and the side's losses as a whole) & flee, and they should actually be capable of exiting the tactical map like heroes.

and guy above me has it right... make shields effective against ranged, and we will have no more archer uberness... But then why even make archers, and how do you win when the AI has a 20x production bonus on hard levels....

sigh... the heroes were not over powered, they are underpowered. The magic system needs adjusting, which is what they are doing for 1.1. We will see how successful they are when it comes out.

Fishslayer. Your example of how good heroes are is a problematic example. The ai does not do anything to counter your heroes. His squads are too small and don't absorb much spell damage, your summon creatures lose their beefiness against 4 man squads and higher which the ai doesn't seem to use much (this would probably have been a better fix than changing the magic system, however th magic system does need a lot of loving so i am not complaining)

ALSO - the ai never assigns a high priority tp your heroes - it does not recognize how much they can swing the battle - it looks at the raw stats of the hero and then ignores it, that is how week heroes are. A human player would kill your heroes first everytime and you would be left with nothing. A human player would account for the damage a spellcaster could dish out in one round of combat - the ai does not. That is why hereos seem overpowered to you. they are fragile spellcasting, arrow slinging glass cannon one trick ponies that the ai cannot deal with.

Some players play out to 900+ turns. With this many turns, you could easily turn out an uber Hero with 25+ Level-ups. But, the game can be easily won before even half this many turns on large, ridiculous, max opponents. My experiene is that heroes at most level up 14, and more typically are in the 9 to 12 Level range at endgame around turn 400, even if buffed with most item shop stuff it's is not going to create a "superman," which I like btw. Also, even with a windows 64 bit system and 8GB ram, I'm crashing every three turns or so on endgame at turn 300+, so I actually prefer "speedy" conquest vs long drawn out games that create uber heroes at endgame (which just isn't necessary).

In a word: yes.  They're heroes! The leaders. The ones who inspire the normal troops to fight. The ones who go and take on the uber baddies in impossible odds and somehow find a way to win.

To spend the whole game building up a hero only to have someone just produce a squad of random guys with hammers who can one shot said hero? Lame.

Exactly. PLease take another look at MoM and AoW:SM. and rethink the hero situation. It will really be worth it in teh long run.