Well, to shell out 400 crystal and 2k gold for an 8 man horse archer squad only to be killed by an 8th level essense-imbued bard would sux just as much from my POV.

IMO, ultimate problem with the tactical combat system is that its trying to be deeper than the simplistic mechanism it was designed. First of all, there's no logic with the time-space fabric of the game. The designers of the game did not define the game "scale" accurately on either the tactical or strategic level, Ex: 

Bows: an extremely brief perusal of bows shows that a well trained bowman could put arrows in 3-inch grooves at the 40/50 yards max (this is how the game seems to model arrows), maximum range of longbows was 400 meters or about 440 yards. This would be the maximum range a mass of bowman would shoot at a moving mass of footsoldiers expecting enough random hits to maintain utility. Research also shows mideaveal archers could put out 12 arrows per minute, and had quivers of two-dozen (although there's a wide range of quiver sizes, these seem to be the largest that I've seen via reasearch).

Horses: average horse cantor speed is 13 to 17 mph, this is equivalent to human jogging. Horses can gallup at 55mph for a quarter mile

Humans: 2 to 5 mph and 6 to 11 for the equivalent human speeds, making horses *roughly* 5 times faster, this should translate to a game speed of 5 times faster for mounted troops vs un-mounted troops. 1 mile = 1760 yards.

Tactical board square-size, harder to calcute since units are arbitrarily blocked from entering other units hexes, but with a cap at squad sizes of 8-men we can assume anything from 10 to 40 yard squares.

Now, put it all together; what do we have in our game? Humans move 2 squares a turn, horses 3, ceder longbows shoot 8 squares (as if the accuracy was 50yards with a volley of two or three which would be roughly 10 to 15 seconds) ... it just doesn't add up ... if we have 10 yard squares and 1 minute turns  humans could move 58 yards/min or about 6 squares, so this is obvously not the scale, although if the time factor was halved we'd have 3squares per 30second turn, however archers should be able to fire about 6shots in this time. But, even at the slow end of the horse "cantor" speed a horse should be able to cover 19 squares at this scale.

Something is just completely amiss with the scale. I don't think the devs had a firm idea as to the scale & just "winged it" or "abstracted" somehow way too much. Horses are completely out of whack any way you cut it, and if the scale is more than 10yds per square, then a completely different mechanism needs to be in place for archers, because direct fire accuracy should not be possible beyond 50 yards (although I don't have a problem with 80 for abstraction, if this is the case) .. something like a random drift for excess arrows at long ranges (>50/80 yards) like Dominions 3 which modeled archers & bows very good IMO for very long range shots. 

BTW: I didn't even cover the lack of LOS blocking obstructions & terrain effect, archers firing through invisible trees for example, which is a completely seperate thing altogether.

In this game you don't need to produce heroes; you can more easily buy them. I've got so many heroes, the only thing limiting me is the gold to buy them. Most of my heroes sit in cities and generate revanue.

Crystal is a highly limited resource, 400 is a huge chunk when you've spent 100/200 turns racking up 1600/2000 crystal or so .. any squad that costs 1/4 of your entire supply is huge. If you lose an channeler, just imbue another one, but if you lose a squad, that cost you 400 crystal. Realistically, you'll only have a handful of these in a large map game. 2k is lot of bucks, whether you're equipping a hero or troop. Gold certainly doesn't fall from the trees, though it is fairly easy to get 100/150 gold a turn by turn 300/400 with city spam. And, heroes are not the only units that level up, so do squads. A 12th level horse archer that cost me 400 crystal is just as important as any other hero to me except the sovereign. From my perspective, squads are just a larger group of "heroes" in this game.

Squads that don't use crystal, elementium, or very little metal are "cheaper" in relation (8 random guys with hammers), sure, just as certain champs are cheaper to buy & just get stuck in towns to increase productivity or whatnot, and it wouldn't be as much a pain to lose one whether it's a champ or squad.

In my opinion the bottom line is balance. As far as hero-vs-squad balance goes, I'm happy with the balance as is. But, I'm not happy with the other things I mentioned: the "type-vs-type balance" in post 39 and the tactical battle "scale" being completely out-of-whack in post 51.

Plus, I disagree with those players that say that kick-ass champs are not possible in this game. It just takes a verrrry long time, as it should. With 900+ turns you can turn out a hero with 25 level ups. Now, equip him with an unlimited supply of stuff from the item shop, 15 or 20 of those +1 strength/speed/dex potions or books you get from goodie huts. A player can easily (well, maybe not so easily) crank out a guy with 80+ HPs, speed 20, attack 60+, def 66+ making him near-invulnerable by turn 900ish.

Should *any* guy be completely invulnerable? Hell no, otherwise the game, any game, would be broken. My 16th level horse archer that I spent 400crystal and 2k bucks on should be able to kill this guy in a couple of rounds, conversely this superman guy should be able to inflect a hell of a lot of damage in those 2 rounds with spells, perhaps in combo with another channaler be able to kill my horse archer, but not before I've done significant damage with that horse archer. Two well balanced armies with 12 units, one with 4 channelers and the other with 2 channeles but 2 extra horse archers, should be roughly 50/50 if the only thing different were two extra channelers on one side and two extra horse archers on the other (assuming roughly equivalent high level experience). The problem is, though, the tactical game is broken because whoever moves first will win in the scenario above, so it doesn't matter. 

My method of play involves speed & efficiency (the "blitzkrieg" approach works very well across most strategy games & generas in general), so I've never seen a hero like that because I've always won by the 300/450 turn range. But, I know that players create heroes like that because I've read about them in other posts. I've never been a big supporter of the "super unit" strategy (in general), I'd rather have multiple strong smaller units (tanks, ships, spaceships, etc) that kill the big guy ... a swarm of army ants kills the elephant ... In a well designed game this is usually the case, games with an "invulnerable" super units that have no counter are usually always broken.  

This goes withour saying, but I fear using champions unless my soveriegn or a spell caster is with them and only if I micormanage every battle.  Cause nothing sucks more then when I was building one of my sons into a killing machine, the kid has 140 mana he had wonderful armor and was on horseback.  he had fought at about 50 battles prior to and was just dominating one side of the map while I handled quest items - I let the computer autofight for him one one too many time s and the kid comes up dead - no fing way.  MY booooooooyyeeeee.

I went on a rampage after that needless to say - and killed all the women and children the enemy had to offer - Revenge is at hand.   Embrace it!

Seriously though I am ok with it if the champion is  a merchant or some other class that should only be used a city multiplier but if the champion is for questing and combat then they should be strong enough to fend for themselves on quest and such,

NO! We do not want kickass heroes.

I've been playing a new game called Guardians of Graxia and that game shows well how heroes should be built and how powerful they should be. It's a game that you can lose your hero/guardian easily enough if you don't take care of it but it's still powerful enough to do a lot more damage than regular troups. It has specials and bonuses for each turn. Perfect example of how heroes should be in any game.

So I really hope Brad et all don't go reversal and all and turn heroes into godlike creatures that can hardly be killed let alone wounded. Heroes should be leaders and give bonuses to troups and the battles but not be the beall endall of the game. They should live and die just like all the other heroes of our own past. Anyone remember William Wallace? He was a hero but he was also human and mortal and that's the way I'd like to see heroes in Ellemental. Don't make them to be so powerful that if you do lose one you'll feel as if you lost the game. They shouldn't be or have that much power. That's the faults of HOMM and AOW and all the rest of those strategy games that put everything into one thing like a hero.

It's a game that you can lose your hero/guardian easily enough if you don't take care of it but it's still powerful enough to do a lot more damage than regular troups.

 

Yes, but in elemental neither situation exists. Even if you take care of your champion, then all it needs is one unlucky roll on a battle start and goodbye champion. That is not tactical that is just stupid. The only champion that can do a lot of damage is a spell caster. All other champion types are nearly useless apart from turn 1-50 unless you find a magical sword to whack on level 1 spiders and wolves

For instance, tactical battle problems, which contribute, so far that I see (perhaps this should go into a seperate post) ;

* No deployment : Simply superb how you start the battle all clumped just soaking up the 9 square nukes before you have even moved. What general would position his archers at the front and all the melee at the back? We need deployment.

* No initiative : Your whole army moves in one go, that is also silly, it is pretty much a staple of this type of battle system that stacks attack in order of initiative. I know this feature is coming and it is sorely needed.

*cpl is correct that ranges are a problem. Archery should be like 3 squares range, horses/wargs should allow 4 squares movement. Spells should also have lower ranges. This would solve a lot of the archery overpower and spell overpower.

I won't go into more complicated factors like how combat actually works or things like having magical defense/resistances. It seems like these should be givens in a game called Elemental

I have been doing some testing in normal mode and part of my ideas are correct, heroes are more balanced, it is just that the AI is so awfully slow it is not much fun. When you play on ridiculous then heroes are a waste of time apart from just picking up treasure and having a couple of spell casters. I only hire the production/farming/resource/prestige boosters in that mode.

I completely agree, but it *is* possible nontheless to create a super hero given enough time & level ups.

Some players have strategies that are more long term. Personally, I think that approach only works in single player games. Those guys taking 900+ turns to win will get stomped by those that can flatten all the AIs by turn 300/450 on Large maps in multiplayer games. A game like this is all about time (at least in multiplayer). 

I personally don't see an issue with champs at this point.. if you put their stat gains in the right places they can be pretty mean. Melee work on combat speed vit and str maybe some dex ignore the others and equip them well and they turn into pretty mean units.

Cleaning up combat will fix that nonsense.

Hahahaha, I get a kick out of how often cpl_rk says there is no explanation in the manual.  It cracks me up.  I haven't even bothered to look at the manual, so I can't technically agree, but I would bet a lot of money it is completely true.

As long as they take a slot another unit could use, melee/archer heroes need to be about equivalant in fighting ability to a unit that would take equal cost (offset by the effort involved in leveling heroes) that could have been used instead.

I personally don't get this argument because they use the same rules as SOVs in leveling up. I have no issue with making heros strong when applying stat gains to the right areas. I don't understand how other people find issue with this. Maybe I actively level up my heros more? My whole army usually tends to consist of heros sovs and a few peon units. I use heros and sovs for the majority of fights and pretty much ignore normal units.

Not to mention you don't need access to resources to equip your heros unlike your troops only the tech.

Unlock the Lord's Hammer tech. Make a squad with that. Proceed to smash hero into tiny pieces as soon as you get a low defense roll.

People need to remember that a Defense score of 100 doesn't stop you from rolling a zero and having NO defense for that hit (and with Lord's Hammers that hit will probably one shot you). Changing that system will help heroes significantly, as will making Constitution scale with level.

Ya in my experience better armor = more magic resistance.. which is why equipping your heros well is so important..