I cannot understand the reason for this design decision. It seems to add needless complexity and discomfort for the player without being fun or making any sense.
First, the making sense part. Champions are people who become developmentally handicapped in the presence of other champions. They are smart as a whip sitting back and letting 6 squads dismantle the opposition, taking notes and learning the ways of uber-pwnage. But with two champions, what happens, is there only one pen and paper for the entire squad? Do they have to take turns writing and split up each other's notes afterwards?
I know this rule was instituted when it was discovered that champions were so powerful that you could beat the game with them without ever building units. This strategy offended those in power long ago, and since then champions were neutered with exp split, general exp decline, and spiced up with that just three to six crummy levels til I get the cool ability feeling. At the same time, units got an extreme buff, and now you can beat the game easily without ever using a champion (or having a champion be useful), but there is no outcry. What gives there?
Now there is the effect on the player. Players have to build an army for each champion, or resign themselves to just having fancy backstories to their unrest reduction in some city. The player must manage these multiple armies, which will never have enough map to level them all, all the while wondering, is this how Peter Venkman felt when Egon told him to never cross the streams? I mean you CAN use them together to win that hard battle (maybe against a giant marshmallow man), with all that juicy exp... which gets split up to the point its just one more stride on the long mile to level 10 or 12, or whatever level a champion actually will feel heroic at. Fellow champions are each other's kryptonite, which makes it a difficult strategic decision whether to use them together, but it's like a choice between crummy or crummier to the player.
This forces a player who knows the split exists to play with far more micromanagement and complexity in the hope, in my experience in vain anyway, that your heroes will eventually be, you know, heroic. I mean make it to the level ups that are fun (the ones that aren't +1-3 to a stat that doesn't make much difference). Players who don't know it exists will just wonder "why are the trees so long"?
I know this is a negative post, but hey, I strongly feel this is a bad decision through and through. The game will be better and more friendly and logical to every newbie, at the least. But I think it may even make people who are strategy diehards have fun teaming up heroes without having to worry about fighting 2-5 times as many battles to get where almost no champion but the sovereign gets in a normal game now. It makes sense and it is a fun, simple strategy to band champions together, and it is bad design to discourage logical, simple, fun gameplay. It is not unthinkable there was another way to encourage more complex gameplay without killing the fun rpg parts of the game or forcing players to juggle making and using many armies.
Btw, I think the game is great and should get deep and wide acclaim, but I think decisions like this endanger it to a possible dilution with "meh" because it doesn't pander to the most visceral and powerful source of fun in games with rpg aspects, the ego identification with heroes and the player's character. I have posted about this before, but basically every game that has ruled this genre has been at best a decent strategy game suped up with a fat layer of ego satisfaction. I think this is a great strategy game that has been drowning out its own ego attraction in the name of balance.
I second the lol on the URXEN babies comment.....that would be cool though. I also think as someone commented previously the +xp traits are really what are annoying. Optimal strategy in almost every case forces me to waste all my first picks on these instead of something I actually want.
The XP split makes this even more mandatory to do, though I think overall the game is better for that implementation there is always room for improvement in how it's been accomplished.
I know many of us started posting here around the release of Gal Civ 2, which was a magnificent game, the best computer strategy game I had played up until recently. I think it is important to be aware of the different reasons we play strategy games though. This is the crux of my argument, which really has nothing to with xp split per se.
I personally play them casually, usually for the stimulation to the imagination with just the added bonus of it being a strategy problem to solve. I play chess as well though, and it is my outlet for a serious strategy in game form. Some people here use this game for their pure strategy diversion, and I respect that. Your arguments are good, sincere, and well thought-out.
Chess is a pure strategy game, there are no graphics, rpg elements, or neat fictional settings. The thing is it is nowhere as complex strategically as computer strategy games, it just is complex enough that it is beyond human limits as we know it to be perfect at it. I wrote a post here https://forums.elementalgame.com/438446/page/1/#3300617 analyzing how hard FE is from a strategic perspective, in the context of designing an optimal AI solution for it.
Now I concede my argument is not superior to yours as far whether exp split or anything I have mentioned is a better idea than what is currently implemented or the ideas expressed in your views. I only make the case that given the rpg aspects of this genre, if they go for perfect strategy game at the expense of highlighting these aspects it will be a sub-optimal experience for fantasy strategy fans as I understand them. Just as preemptive defense, I don't think playing to these aspects entails that the pure strategy experience of the game must suffer. I just think if you want to please a wide audience who likes this genre, it would be wise to err in that direction, instead of the one they have been going for a very long time.
I posted this analysis a while back, and I want to repost it here. I know some fans of these games may find it contentious, but here is how I view FE and LH:
I just want to justify saying LH is the best strategy game I have played by comparing it to the other big names in the fantasy TBS genre. I think what people liked the most about these games is something that LH could focus on a bit more and steal everyone's hearts, especially people who get annoyed at rough edges.
I think what is making LH work so well now is that it has more game elements than any other strategy game I have played, and they are accessible and user-friendly. Deep tech, spells, heroes, quests, goodies, resources, wildlands, events, diplomacy, designable and upgradeable units, as well as upgrades to all player resources. (Edit, so much stuff I didn't remember it all) Not to mention the world as a hostile actor, that just isn't in any other TBS I have played (at least to a remarkable level). This game is hands down a far better strategy game than any other fantasy TBS.
Dominions 3: Other games use far less and are less user-friendly, Dom3 comes to mind. Dom3 is hardcore though, I got in to it for a while, but it is just too complex (not in the good way, it was plumbing through hundreds of pages of manual to figure out how something works) and so abstract you really need to use your imagination way too much. The whole god candidate thing was an amazing part of the attraction, a lot of the other stuff was just a lot of work. Take that ego attraction out of the game and I wonder how many people would want to play it.
Master of Magic: MoM gets adulation for being awesome years before any other big fantasy TBS was available, but it is fairly empty and slow compared to LH. I think nostalgia is involved with its place. But it did really make the wizarding element personal and immersive, and that made up for a whole lot of stuff that wasn't as much fun. The spells and how they made a big deal of it with cut-scenes is pure immersion. The game played like a stripped down early Civ though. That's why I think sovereign leveling and a little ego love there would steal the thunder of that game. A little more sparkle and dazzle around the sovereign would hit at people's egos, and that kind of fun is deep and spreads over turn after turn, immersed in the idea of a wizard gaining power to rule the world.
Age of Wonders: AoW series really did the wizarding element well too, and had very neat tactical battle graphics. Not balanced at all, and tech and upgrades were there but not that involved, but the game was carried by the ego fun of the wizard you were using. It had a cool story, cut scenes, and champions that basically rocked the world. Units were there but blah. People get attached to individuals, so I really loved overpowered champions that ripped the map up. It was shallow though, because heroes were so overpowered they were one man wrecking crews with all the empowerments you could give them.
So LH is the most complex and accessible of all of these, it plays way better than any of these. How in the world you got so much to work together so well is a feat I am floored by. I think the only weak part that makes people notice the rough edges so much (and every one of the above games had huge rough edges, except AoW 2 and Shadow Magic were pretty polished) is that leveling and power acquisition for the sovereign and heroes isn't rpg immersive enough to get that long-lasting ego immersion fun. Who cares if some small part has a bug when you are having such a blast? Some bells and whistles around magic, having every level something to look forward to, and making something more explicitly unique about the sovereign would increase the fun factor way out of proportion to its implementation cost.
splat
You gotta warn us with walls of text.
Most certainly FE (and presumably LH) has been the most strategic fantasy 4x game to hit the market. I am really looking to see if a rumored MoM2 DLC will come to pass...cause then I get to add nostalgia to the package!
I totally agree with this sentiment. But I think looking at the rate that experience is gained will not get you to the promised land. Reading your post helped me put my finger on exactly what I think is missing from FE/LH (other than a competitive AI).
As you say FE/LH does so much right: the RPG elements are extensive and intuitive, the strategy and civilization building scale, the game's balance needs tweaking here and there, but overall is very keen. The one thing that's missing from the overall experience is...
Zinga.
That company mastered the visual, auditory and tactile reward system that's part of the key to RPG success. Of course, they used that skill to provide their boring, pointless and uncomplicated games with the illusion of being fun. Sure, they're entertaining, but they're not fun.
The problem is that LH/FE is a great game that does not entertain.
It's not going to happen, I know that. But IMHO LH should focus on providing immediate, unconscious, temporal rewards for leveling your heroes and towns. It sounds stupid but the game needs fireworks going off, a parade, or something like that to make these big moments feel big. The game just doesn't do non-interactive-celebratory-animation-things to encourage the player to acknowledge each achievement. (Which is what I see at the core of the RPG experience)
Whenever they try to do it, you get a dialog or an interstitial screen. In other words, an interactive-work-static-thing that prevents you from playing the game.
They've made a few moves in this direction, like the post-battle XP counter, and the trait selection screen is so slick that it carries an element of reward, but the game is still mostly in the TBS mindset which IMHO does detract from the RPG experience.
I haven't read through the entire thread, but even after the update in .85, leveling just two heroes is problematic. I don't care if people say that stacking heroes into one massive group is OP. This is a single player game. If you think it is OP, then don't do it. It is just so incredibly frustrating to earn the fame or finish a quest and get 'rewarded' by a hero, and then pay that Hero to sit at a town and do absolutely nothing. Quite frankly, it is just straight up bull crap. If you want to limit and do a split, then give me two per group, though if your randoms quests line up, you can have as many as 5-6. I tend to run two stacks, an A and a B. I was doing a C in FE, but there just is any reason any more. I'd rather pay two heroes to do nothing than 4-5.
What is even less fun is that they do scale XP due to map size. They scale XP rewards down the larger the map.
But the AI has to be able to follow the same rules of the game as we do. Thus, if I were to choose not to do it and it was available the obvious strong strategy, then the AI would proceed to do it just because it's the obvious strong strategy. Consequently, this would force the player to do the same.....or lose.
The answer isn't to force me to have all my hard won heroes sitting in town(s) getting paid to do nothing because I can't afford to build enough troops to run them.
So lets run down how the Beta has progressed.
1) I must expand exceedingly slow, between pop caps and unrest and I'm capped at total number of cities at a round 5-6 unless I jump through hoops.
2) I can only afford the troops to run, sorry horses/wargs were nerfed, walk, one hero at a time in a single stack, because doing anything else means that because of reduced XP, you can't get over level 6.
3) New monsters are nice and tough, but you can't face them until after you have spent exactly how many turns doing nothing waiting until research is complete so that you can produce troops to face them, or else just lose troops in a revolving door fashion.
4) It seems as if everything in the game has been contrived to make everything into an excruciating grind and if you are smart enough and patient enough when you get to mid/late game, you walk through everything by beating things over the head with an axe.
5) All my heroes are drinking beer and laughing at me, while I pay them to do so.
At least in FE when I won, I had lots of different ways of always winning and lots of things to keep busy with. Currently this thing is sort of like watching paint dry. It funny though because I like the new quests and the new monsters, the new gear and even the new Hero's. The rest of it though is like ick poo. I also don't play 'quick' turns. I love really long grinding games, but somewhere this just did not become fun.
So if I can't run a stack of heroes because the AI would be forced to do the same, even though not being able to has not helped it at all. Let me run them as a two man team. It will speed up the beginning game a bit, it is simple enough to let the AI do the same, and I won't have quite so many of them doing absolutely nothing.
This, specifically, is something I *dont* want to see happen with this game. Why? The logic is simple: If, in order to remain challenging/balanced/whatever, a game requires that I OUTRIGHT IGNORE an aspect of it (in this case, heaping things together), then SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH THE GAME DESIGN. It only emphasizes the fact that there's a massive imbalance there, and one which could be fixed with better design and balancing.
If I want a game that lets me rampage mindlessly with some overpowered character/unit/army/Godzilla, frankly, I will just go and play a different game. That's NOT what I'm looking for with a game like this one, and I'm betting I'm not the only one. I used to be mostly a console gamer myself, but in the last year or so, I switched over to being primarily a PC gamer.... and things like this are the reason why. There's too many games out already that are braindead easy, either due to imbalances or bad design or an obsession with being "accessible". Games like that, to me, are fun for about 5 minutes, and then they just get idiotic. With a game like this one, I expect a more strategic, tactical experience. I expect the game to force me to make decisions and strategize and think out my moves and stuff like that. I *dont* expect it to give me a giant mechanized psychic t-rex that can destroy mountains using only the power of its face. Got enough dull console games doing that one already. I want a challenge, but I dont want to have to put part of the game aside to GET that challenge. Instead, alter the badly-thought-out bit and make it fit with the rest.... dont leave it bad and just say "well if it makes you unstoppable and makes things easy, just dont use it".
AND, if it were to be left like that, you'd get alot of players that would indeed use it.... and THEN they'd complain afterwards, saying "Yeah, that game had great potential.... but it really went bad on the strategy aspect, because there wasnt any, you just made the Stack of Doom and went on a rampage". Likely, such a complaint would be heard pretty often.
....not to mention, it seriously just wouldnt make any bloody sense. Think of, I dunno, any sort of war game. You'd never, ever have a unit that's just a bunch of commanders/generals/leaders wandering the battlefield BY THEMSELVES, because that's bloody stupid. It's fine for those guys to LEAD an army, and even take part in the fight themselves perhaps with special abilities since they're the leaders... but it's dumb to have them REPLACE an army.
Though, by that same logic, the heroes really do need to be constantly useful in some way... if I've got like 6 of them and only 2 of them are DOING anything (and the other 4 dont NEED to do anything).... then something is wrong with the balance/design. I very, very much dont want to see a total Stack of Doom with a huge blob of hero units, but I do want heroes to have some sort of purpose/use other than city management. I'd love the idea of having like 5 seperate armies (each with a hero) all out on the map, doing different things based on my strategy/tactics/whatever, but indeed, right now it seems I never really have more than 2 or so armies. A third one is either A: not going to work very well due to it being increasingly difficult to get enough XP for them (often due to there not being enough things of the right levels to fight), or B: bloody pointless, because the first 2 are more than enough.
Overall, I agree with the XP split idea, but I think there are plenty of balance issues with heroes in a general sense right now that definitely need to be worked out.
There was more to say, but heck if I remember what it was.
I don't agree with OP and other peeps sustaining his point of view.
XP split is a very good mechanic. It forces you to make choices, do I want 1 super duper hero, or a pack of mid tier ones?
Let's compare:
1 Level 10 hero will have less hp, less defense, less attack than 3 level 4 heroes. He will be able to use higher level items (weapon mainly) which will give him better attack, true. But having 3 different types of heroes (a spell caster, an assassin and a defender for example) gives you more flexibility and more options.
Almost all loot you will find will be put to good use with more heroes than with a single one. In this game gear plays a major part in strength of a unit (be it hero or trained units).
So think about it from all points of view. There are spells to increase the XP, same as skills (which you should pick first before specializing in other things, as you should mainly explore & gather for first part of game and not warmongering or fighting every wandering mob stack on map).
The beauty is tho that you can play the game both ways and be successful, either focusing on a single hero / champ, or growing more. I've finished games with a level 10 Sovereign and several level 3-7 champions, without ever warmongering, either by casting the spell of making or diplomatic victory, while still venturing deep into wildlands (like scrapyard, beating some dragons and stuff as well etc). I never was in a scenario where I felt that my Sovereign or champions are underpowered, hit like sissies, get 1 shot from random monsters or what not. You have spells to augment them, you can craft magic items to empower them, you can switch gears depending what you're facing (to improve a specific element resist, or dodge, or defense, or spell resist etc).
i recently played a game with Altar using some henchmen and i must say it's quite fun to have several hero units in a stack without penalties to levelling them up. it's a bit too easy, though. in the early game (on a large hard/hard world with dense monsters) i pretty much had to use my sov together with my first champion (i made the sov a commander and the champ a defender). i literally had to fight my way through a wall of bandit, mites and bears to even get a second settlement. together with 2 spearmen they cleared the countryside, dealing with quite a few dangerous foes (that giant harridan stack with brood hunters was a nightmare, winning that battle felt very rewarding). that initial phase was great. later on, i split the two champs up and added a healer and a defender henchman to my commander sov and a commander and healer henchman to the defender sov (along with a couple damage specced trained units for each of them).
judging from that game, i'd say a reduced penalty for XP split would be more balanced and more fun. it wasn't very epic/rewarding when that nightmare battle vs. the deadly harridan stack yielded so little XP, and it also felt too cheap when (later on) an encounter with a "deadly" bone ogre stack yielded 2 level ups for my healer henchman and 1 for the level 10 defender champ and the commander henchman. no XP split at all is probably too powerful.
I am just stunned at so many people missing very important point : This game is 4X + RPG, not just RPG nor just 4X.
Even before we are talking about modern RPG xp system and MMO mechanics, the most obvious problem with XP split is that RPG elements (sov and heroes) have to compete with 4X elements (troops), and such drastic change on XP system does not fond well because one element will overshadow the other very easily.
Currently, other than first sov, all other heroes are simply uber-expensive-to-maintain scouts. Even adding just 1 more hero with sov will cut the xp by 50% and both heroes become highly noncompetitive against troops. By the time they reach level 10 (which barely maxed out one magic tree or got some traits here and there) they would be against horde of fully-armored horsemen with 30+ damage (on expert level or higher difficulty).
In current state, only mage-type hero with correct path (maxed out XP gain traits and specialized with either full magic damage or full utility) or a hero with incredibly good armor/weapon/artifact is useful. Rest of them are really just a waste of gold. You really do not need more than 1 hero.
"But that's why they should have troops as escorts!" Not to mention they die first anyway by archers' focused fire, but soon you realize that heroes hardly contribute to the battle, realize it is better put one more well-made troops instead of heroes on the army slot, and finally realize they are just good for goodies grabbing and quest grabbing, and eventually, realize they are just one hell-of-expensive scouts.
Actually, they are very decent scouts that they never die thus do not disturb build queues on your cities. They are completely expendable in exchange for high maintenance fee.
Even in very late game where you can finally deploy multiple armies, and decide to put some heroes to decorate your armies, they are struggling to level up because pretty much all of monster lairs are gone at that point, and heroes gain very small amount of xp from killing AI troops.
The best solution is remove XP split (which, most of rpg/MMO games these days do not have such outdated mechanic anyway) with reverted damage of troops (0.80) and reverted damage of hero weapons (pre 0.87).
If we are really going to keep the XP split, then XP gain from killing AI armies should be back to WoM level and monsters/lairs should be re-spawning like WoM, and all factions should be able to buy quest maps. Without such large amount of XP flow from early to very late game, the RPG elements just cannot compete with the 4X elements.
And please stop bring D&D. It is good for table-top, but really horrid rule-set for computer games, hence bloody no one uses it anymore and it should stay that way.
And no, with current state, no one is going to mod this game to test those balance issues. Do not attempt to wonder why there is/will be very few mods... This game is just barely moddable. Just barely, really.
It's not true that all heroes are useless.
A lvl 5 commander who specializes in unrest is useful, as is a high-level commander who specializes in troops and can get +init.
I think the .87 changes make being stacked eq-wise much easier. Also, hero spam has been toned down due to the movement of the Adventurer's Guild out of the early game entirely.
I do think .87 does a good job in fixing some of the imbalance between classes, though it might be a bit of a lottery (not necessarily a bad thing)
I think the only change I'd like to see, is for the Drills tech to enable a building that gives the XP bonus impact of the adventurer's guild in each city. It should be expensive. I think that would get things to the sweetspot- I do think it's now on the dartboard instead of having the dart in the wall somewhere.
Excellent post.
And I am not saying that because I agree with you, although it probably helps
I wish all of the other posters would comment on one of your eloquently written statements, instead of argueing about balance and strategy. This game, any game, is also about fun, people! Fun and sales figures...
*This is a long post, my last effort to appeal to the devs to change course*
I would like to propose a metric to make a point, I'll call if fun per game minute (FPM). So imagine some quantification of fun over the player's head as he/she plays the game, and then taking an average of that per minute. I will say that I think this what has changed the most from WoM release until now, the game plays to the experience of the player much better.
For someone who plays LH like Gal Civ 2 in a different setting (I'll call them universal strategy player, USP), they will not be affected much by the "problem" I am describing. Heroes and sovereigns are more like tools to ultimately win the game to them than what I would call the more exclusive fantasy strategy player (FSP). To the former type of player the goal is first and foremost to win the game. Their FPM does not fluctuate greatly around heroes and sovereign events, not nearly as much as strategically defining moments where they have clinched a major milestone toward victory.
I (and I believe FSPs) do not play first and foremost to win the game. If I won the game in 100-200 moves, I would be unsatisfied. I do play not to lose, but I mostly play to enjoy the content. I play the game like half-rpg, which means my heroes and sovereign are more important than the AI opponents to me. Quests, wandering monsters, and wildlands are are more my obstacles than killing AIs. In fact, this would be my ideal mode. https://forums.elementalgame.com/443154/page/1/
My FPM numbers are constantly affected by my heroes and sovereign, my numbers go up significantly when I am overpowered (to a limit), and they plunge when I am underpowered. Other sovereigns are mostly abstractions, winning the game is something I would put off if I could do it. I do enjoy wars beating other sovereigns, but the wars as implemented aren't that satisfying and they put me in danger of winning. I only want to win when I have had a good amount of fun. My goals are getting powerful heroes and especially a sovereign, and then using that power on an appropriate challenge. The AI is almost never this challenge, because their troops fall en masse in a turn or two to the stacks I have.
Apparently many (maybe most?) on this forum want the ideal strategic challenge, and their FPM plunge when they discover a strategy is overpowered. Mine does not, I would use the strategy if it was fun, I would ignore it otherwise. That is why there is an overflow of emotionally charged posts about balance. Their FPM in a game they love is being affected.
Now I want my way, and they want theirs. But I can get my way by just modifying the game files (I do it regardless), they would have a far more difficult time solving their problems this way. I understand this, but I am going to use the dirty sales numbers trick anyway, because I want to see at least one enormous expansion with as many full-time people on the job as possible. This is only possible if the game makes an unexpectedly large amount of money.
I think the forum is not representative of the potential fantasy strategy audience as a whole. Gal Civ 2 was a completely different type of strategy game. The rpg elements change everything. There are two types of players to entice I am talking about, a fantasy strategy player and an rpg-player looking for novelty. The first's numbers are not huge, the second numbers in the millions on Steam. Superb AI will not be fully appreciated by this audience, empire building and teching will be undervalued by this audience, and heroes, the sovereign, and quests will be overvalued by this audience. What this audience overvalues is underwhelming at this point, what is really superb about this game is undervalued. They will be confused by what is intuitive to the audience on this forum. They will put all their champions together, and their FPM numbers will plummet as they realize this is ruining what they value. They are rpg-players, they will not want to deal with complexity of dealing with empire-building and building a 20-30 turn army for each champion to get what they want, if they even realize this is how they have to do it.
Sell out to this audience. It comes cheap, in terms of not changing the overall vision much and time to implement. Focus on the experience an rpg player would highly value, and give them what they want. Let them play simply without penalty. You know the beauty of it? It hardly affects the wonderful pure strategy experience you have invested so much effort in. It is a show, it is the appearance, and a good portion of the pure strategy players will be enamored as well by the rpg focus.
It may mean you have to move back the deadline, especially since in my estimation you are far from the point where the pure rpg player looking for novelty will pick up and love your game. That audience is in the millions, roll the dice and see how big your name can get.
i think that was a golden opportunity to make heroes (well, champions) feel like true heroes allowing them to defeat dozens of trained troops alone and at the same time bring sense of progression to the strategic 4x part of the game by raising the highest group to 12 units (3/6/9/12). That way by the mid-late game the small parties of a few soldiers leaded by a wannabe leader would be replaced by armies of dozens commanded by a deadly hero. Instead of that we have small groups of 6 troops commanded by still-wannabe heroes.
For someone who is all about the FSP, you sure are obsessed with min-maxing. Tell you what, stop thinking about maximizing XP gain and just play the game the way that feels the most fun to you.
If you want to have your champs in a stack, put your champs in a stack. They will still gain XP and still level. They probably wont even level that much more slowly.
Champ A attacks an enemy and earns 10XP
Champ B attacks an enemy and earns 10XP
How much experience would each champ get if you put them both into the same army and attacked those same two enemies?
10XP! The exact same amount. IT'S A MIRACLE!
The game is not forcing you to employ this one-champion strategy you say you hate; you are doing it to yourself. Stop it.
Having said that, there are some really bad ideas where the game lets you fiddle with XP gain (specifically the +XP traits) that throw off the XP curve for the game entirely. Unfortunately, the way the game is now, you should always pick those traits first on every champ. Stardock should do away with those traits entirely, have mobs and quests provide more XP in general, and leave +XP for rare magical items.
Not exactly. The number of units in the trained groups could raise so armies are bigger. Instead of weakening heroes, strengthening trained troops by raising their numbers, which would feel much more heroic.
I have the sovereign plus two other champions relatively early on in the game and feel like I'm forced to bench them in favor of the Sov running around on his own with the available regular joe units. I agree entirely with the OP about the feeling of being strong armed into having champions in separate armies, but this simply isn't viable early on. Not when you need bare minimum 5 units to combat the early monsters reliably.
In other aspects, the greatest fun in RPGs is not from playing the sole hero, it is the party dynamics. Something which stems from pen and paper rpgs of old, and have carried over into the modern day RPG and MMORPGs which emphasizes this aspect. Just about any Final Fantasy game under the sun have one main character in focus, but there is a large variety in the support cast throughout each game. The champions of LH should be that support cast, to the Sovereign.
In terms of balancing, there are clear pros and cons versus a party of 3 or more champions vs a mixed party of champions and regular units to support them.
tl:dr the XP party penalty is ruining the game.
I guess the question I have for those who like the XP split as it stands now is this: by the time you have earned your second* champion (or third**), do you have an army to accompany her/him by that time? Or have you made plans such that in a few turns you are ready to supply him/her with two or three units?
I am not the best player in the world (and I don't want or need to be; I just want to enjoy my game), so I may not be using the early champions effectively, but I park any champions I receive in my newest city for the Unrest reduction bonus. I wish I could decline them, due to the economic penalty, especially if I am constructing buildings to lessen my unrest, which is the only use I find for champions early game.
As I see it, champions are only of use in the early game when they can be accompanied by troops, but if you are not in a position to provide them with good troops (not enough resources/money/research yet), I do not see how they can be an asset. I suppose it is a matter of the player's grand plan and how they choose to attain victory, but to my way of playing, I might field two armies with one Hero each and the rest of the armies will usually contain units that I train (some of which have pretty good abilities, despite not being champions).
In edit-* and ** should have been first and second, respectively.
First, I never park my champs. They should be questing/exploring.
To answer your question, though, no. I don't always have backup troops for my champ. I put champ #2 (that I get immediately when I build the beacon) in the army with my sov and quest. By the time champ #3 comes along, I am usually able to provide him/her a second army.
The last couple games I played with a summoner and then with a Sov with the Tame ability so I always had a pretty good number of support troops. In that case, I split my armies up because I want to explore/grab goody huts/quest over as much of the map as possible.
@ sweatyboatman
I mod my sovereign with whatever +exp% makes the game the most fun for me. I would never, ever do any work in a game to pick a +exp% bonus on level up. I have things to do in my life, and working hard in video games to have fun is not on my list. I also load him 15 points or so attributes in a modded race with 15 points of picks. I use the all the picks that are fun, the rest I have but may or may not use. I can mod out the exp split if it really bothers me, I usually add a +exp% to stack on my sovereign instead. I set the game to hard so there is some illusion of threat from the AI and I enjoy my casual strategy game player ass off.
I just want them to make another expansion with an even larger team, so I posted my views here.
As soon as you stick that second champion in, the reduced leveling speed, combined with the over all reduced available XP in LH, means that your leveling pace drops to a seeming crawl. At which point you will always be under level when facing AI sovereigns/heroes and it takes nearly twice as long to become able to actually successfully face Strong critters, packs of which are roaming everywhere fairly early.
For me, I get that third champ fairly quickly because I make sure to do the beginning 'weak' quests. I also build clerics. I never have enough troops for my third hero. I just can't afford to do it. I end up with two heroes sitting doing nothing.
Hello there,
I only play Fallen Enchantress so I don't know about LH, but from my point of view it's not that high level are overpowered (yeah they are actually), it's more that the rest is underpowered. In FE there is THE uber spell named "parangon". With it you just don't need to xp two or three hero, you juste xp the sovereign, get him whatever +Hit per level you find (up to +7 i've done once) and power channel some random hero who become so much gamebreaking it finiches the masterquest... with all sort of deathmalus...
More to say with the use of henchmen (one parangon => +6 levels... hum), but that's not the place. (need a huge nerf, like having a moderate weight in xp sharing like half a hero, else the strongest party in the game is one hero +8 henchmens)As for the XP split I agree with the "moderate" split (2heroes => 80% and so on) because it would help the AI as much as the player (usually there is more than one hero in AI army, but no more than 3) hence not destroying the game.
But what if monsters where REALLY powerfulls? I mean the master quest can be accomplished mid game if you use some tricks (fire resist and diamond skin for a man at contact), also, the wastelands are meant to be taken mid/end-game (else why colonise them?) so the they're boss are decents, but it should exists some monsters with the sole purpose of being stronger than them and attacking empires and kingdoms cities all the same (after all dragon used to rule the world, why don't they try again?).
As for an RPG fan I would like truly better weapons (but even for trained troops after all i like challeng), cause the best stuff in game are the berserkers axe and broadsword (i like maul but on a 200+ accuracy man it's just unfair... And more killing than the heartseeker from the epic quest you nearly failed), as well as armor.As for the strategy fan I would like some diplomacy enhancements (cause the actual system is just ridiculous on some point: having to pay for a treaty where the other part gains more than me? really?) but overall this one side is pretty fine.
Like some I enjoy having strong heroes, like ones who kill a dozen warriors before breakfast, but I love when the enemy can pull decent challenge with end tier troops, fruits of high level technology (and who are not that much costly that you have to be already winning to produce them). It would save me from doing other thing than the masterquest everytime.
Maybe a point for heroes in FE to be leaders would be to helps troops dishing damages (there is tactician for exemple but it help everyone in the stack, what about an unstackable boost (two generals make one to disrupt the other's orders) to trained troop only (more armor, attack, giving them spécial abilities or whatever you like...)
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