So I've been playing a lot more Legendary Heroes as of late and I've begun to have some pet peeves that nag me. Overall, the game is great and fun, a definite improvement over the past two titles. However, outside my previously mentioned opinion on the lack of naval.. anything... I've found hero experience is one aspect of the game that's dragging the fun down. Here's the problem:
Experience bonus traits and experience 'sharing' between heroes.
These two issues frustrate me more than anything due to the simple reasons that the bonuses are mandatory traits and the experience penalty on heroes makes early game heroes more or less unrest buff bots. These unhappy souls sit in cities doing nothing until you can afford units to protect them out in the wilderness, which can take a while, depending on your faction.
I've seen these mentioned in passing before, but I haven't seen a thread dedicated to them yet. So if I missed one and am being redundant, I apologize in advance. Yet, these two issues continue to plague me as they heavily restrict freedom in the early game. On the one hand, the experience traits are mandatory because if you do not take them, you gimp your heroes because most (if not all) of the AI takes them. So to keep up with the Joneses, you must wade through 3-4 traits that do nothing for your hero except make them level faster. Not fun.
On the other hand, the hero experience penalty for having more than one hero in an 'army' means that the early game sees someone sitting on the bench once you get your first (or even second) hero in addition to your sovereign. Couple this with no way to gain exp from governing until you get the Adventurer's Guild and you have basically a glorified enchantment in the form of unrest reduction sitting at level 1 for.... a while. Again, not fun.
Both these issues make the early game in terms of hero development and party selection very linear. Why bring several champions if they'll only all slow down leveling and be crushed by a high level AI sovereign later down the road? For the same reason, why not take all the exp bonuses you get along with having your heroes off on their own? To do otherwise risks the aforementioned crush scenario. There's no real variation, and in some cases, you actually have to slow down your fame accumulation or you'll have a harem of heroes doing nothing but sucking up pay and exp all for unrest reduction because you have no room for them in your armies without the experience penalty.
My solution to both these problems is simple:
1) Remove all experience bonus traits.
They add nothing to the game, are tedious, boring, and are mandatory to stay competitive with the AI. In short, they delay the fun parts of hero leveling as you don't really start picking traits until level 5-6.
2) Ease the experience penalty on multi-hero armies.
I understand that the probable reason for this change was to stop stacks of army munching heroes from destroying everything. But that was back when actual army units were far less useful than they are now. Furthermore, you can still have an experience penalty, just have it a gradient where the more heroes you have in an army beyond a certain point (two or three, for example) the more severe the experience penalty becomes.
The result of both the above changes frees up the early game and character development to be less linear and not having a mad dash just to keep up with the AI in terms of leveling. You wouldn't be forced to take experience boosting traits and you wouldn't have early game heroes doing nothing but yelling at villagers to stop relieving themselves on your Monument. As an added benefit, your early game force would be less screwed over if they took early losses, as now you could bolster unit loses with your champions without worry of penalty.
In short, I think these changes would make the game more fun and less artificially structured in the early game.
P.S. I should also extend a personal thanks to Stardock for the free copies of both Fallen Enchantress and now Legendary Heroes. I think, despite the flop that War of Magic might of been, I got the better end of the deal as both FE and LH combined were more than worth the 60 bucks I sunk into WoM.
Coyote303, I am curious, how would you play in the following situation? It is a 2/(X+1) split instead of a 1/X.
1 hero = 100% 2 heroes = (66% each) 133% 3 heroes = (50% each) 150% 4 heroes = (40%) 160% 5 heroes = (33.2%) 166% 6 heroes (28.5%) 171%
Would you feel compelled to put all your heroes in to one stack? Even though you could theoretically only do 1/X as many quests, 1/X as many goodie huts, and cover 1/X as much of the map as separating them?
I think XP considerations shouldn't come in to factor as to whether to use heroes together. It gets the player thinking about numbers and hits upon greed in roleplaying, in general it is not a fun strategic consideration. That's why I would want to do away with it, creatively if need be, but get to the point where almost everyone feels comfortable playing with multiple heroes in the army. I believe whatever changes to mechanics allow that are secondary to the goal of having the fun strategies play fun.
I would second a 2(X + 1) split instead of the current 1/X split. I think that would work quite well.
That is sort of what I was thinking. I would probably make it even flatter (ie closer to the current full splitting) but a formula like this which gave a small rise in total hero XP available as the number of the heroes increased might work OK.
There is still one question I asked in another thread but has never been answered.
We now have armies of doom. Heck, I won most fights in a campaign on challenging with armies of three trained troops, including the quest victory combat.
How is that so superior to heroes of doom ? Instead of having no point to use troops, we now have no point to use heroes, in a game named, forgive me, Legendary Heroes! (notice: not Legendary Troops!)
Seems that people who want to stick on with the XP splitting mecanism want to play a standard wargame. That's not what I expect LH to be, that is a mix of RPG and Strategy, where RPG has a dominant but not overwhelming role. That's where Master of Magic (from which LH explicitely draws) was.
Yves
Underpowered heroes and XP splitting are hardly analogous with each other. Heroes were much more powerful in most versions of FE and that had XP splitting so don't pretend that the two issues are the same.
I certainly would like heroes to be more powerful but that can by done by increasing how fast their level (amongst other things), rather than changing the XP splitting.
Good point.
The problem with XP splitting is there is a large camp that don't use heroes together because of the split (strangely, some of these same people strongly endorse the split). The other problem is that most people in this beta know the mechanics inside out, so they grind and maximize their XP gains through separate armies in ways that people who don't already own the game won't know. Also, some of the people who do own the game (like me) loathe XP maximization as a strategic consideration.
Can we really say that we don't want heroes to be used together as a game design policy? There is no incentive currently to do so, I would think many see a disincentive to do so, and in fact most everyone I see posting how they achieved satisfying hero levels did so by avoiding using them together and really expertly grinding out as much XP as possible.
While XP splitting is not the same as underleveling, they are related in the fact that eliminating or softening the split increases how fast heroes can level if used together. I mean, don't we want a strategic incentive to use heroes together in some number?
i disagree that there is no incentive to use heroes together. in my experience, it's a lot easier to clear all those early game lairs that block expansion when you use all your heroes together. also, you can't really afford several armies early on, so it's the smart thing to do. it takes a lot of tech before trained units outpace even a low level champion. if you don't use all of your heroes in the early game, you're wasting potential.
splitting them up later is a natural development. as you expand, you can afford several armies, and you want at least one hero in each army anyway (if nothing else, he'll at least be able to pick up loot).
Clearly no.
Build up two or three trained troops and go with single hero to clear the lairs and maximize XP.Did you try it ? I think not.
I became absolutely convinced on the first time I felt I had to do this, due to XP splitting. Fighting with trained troops is so much easier than with heroes!
Early game heroes can't take a beating like they can later on and only very specific types of early game heroes can hold their own as well as a leather armored, spear-wielding cheap unit can. Furthermore, if you lose your 40ish production unit in a fight, oh well, make another, no huge loss. Lose your hero? You roll the dice on whether or not they get a permanent injury that could snowball into a gimp hero that becomes progressively more useless until you are able to use a restoration potion on them.
The risk vs. reward isn't really there early game when using heroes together. The risk of falling behind in xp and your heroes getting alpha struck resulting in debilitating injuries, typically outweighs whatever small benefits they provide.
Yeah, I second both of these points. Maybe keep the 25% bonus XP trait for mages though, to reflect them having the smarts.
of course i tried that. i'm not saying it doesn't work. it's just worse.
i'm not going to tell you how to play your game. if you enjoy it the way you play - fine. it's been a long time since i last played the game on default settings. i don't enjoy it that way. i play on dense monsters, expert difficulty, with lots of quests and wildlands. sometimes even at epic tech pace. in other words, i play it with a focus on RPG/hero development. in my games, heroes are a lot better than trained troops for a long time.
there are lots of lairs that you just can't tackle with a single hero and 3-4 spearmen. another hero makes a huge difference. you probably don't have to tackle those lairs when you play default settings, and by the time you decide to do it, you have enough cities and tech to make monster lairs obsolete.
For me, this expansion despite improving many aspects of the game, in one direction - and consider major - after all is called legendary heroes, have a very bad xp mechanism. I just feel that my heroes do not evolve, nor come close to becoming legendary. Perhaps they can rename this expansion to Worthless Heroes.
No,I don't enjoy it.
Its just awfully more efficient.And BTW, I play huge, dense, challenging. Normal everything else.
And of course, there are lots of lairs that I have to let live because they are too strong! Of course, I will not place a city one or two tiles of a high level lair even if there is a juicy spot there. And I will constrain my borders to prevent them from encompassing a dangerous lair. I keep troops behind to defend endangered cities. I may even use bait to divert a strong stack and buy time. Also, soon enough, there are spells that will hold an army in place, buying the time to bring in enough reeinforcements. Then, there are times where you cannot save a city. This happens too.
Then telling me 'there are lots of lairs that you just can't tackle with a single hero and 3-4 spearmen. another hero makes a huge difference' is not very informative. Of course, i'll answer : 'another spearman makes a huge difference' (yes, both increase your army by 20-25% ; that's fairly significant.) The truth is in some cases, the right hero with the right spells/skills will make a huge difference; most of the times, the second hero you have doesn't fit that well. He still is not useless, but he doesn't bring more than would another troop. And too often, the second hero is useless; it may be because you don't have enough mana to fuel his spells, or because he has crappy armor or weapon, or whatever... and now that hero is a liability because you have to organize your tactics to have him survive instead of focusing on defeating the enemy. Not that I don't like that! It's challenging. But when this happens two combats out of three, then said hero rather smells like a damsel in distress than the hero of legends.I remember a commander hero whom I sent back in the tavern after five combats. She died five times... poor thing. Her two orthree troops (I'm not sure) survived well enough; thanks Legendary Troops! She just wasn't up to the task of surviving ranged attacks with poor armor and hit points. And I did not have the money to pay the delirious prices for hero equipment.
As for troops, I often find a three essence spot early on. That spot is immediately dedicated to building units,covered with as many enchantments as I have. This means +3 attacks for sure (I always have fire ; the game is unfairly favoring fire), possibly +3 defense. Choose light armor (whatever gives no encumbrance) and as dangerous a weapon as you can. Give them as large initiative as possible. Needless to say, these troops rock and beat the hell out of heroes.
Then of course, much also depend on your research strategy. You can ignore the weaponry tree for too long.
And much depends on which heroes you meet, too.
All this to say that comparing play styles is rather pointless.
What I am sure of is that heroes are too weak compared with current top notch troops. This goes worse at the end of the game (i.e. the gap between troops and heroes widens.)
So at the very least, don't let me dream and stop calling that game Legendary Heroes...
I could not agree more with all who criticize this new XP system. It simply prohibits that heroes walk together.
I don't think it's a pure split i think people are overlooking base xp calculation as in 2 heroes being considered stronger than 1 regardless of level by the game and thus getting less xp for winning encounters ? Has anyone looked into that ?
Also the xp split is a knee jerk reaction to the super stacks of heroes people used to run around with in FE real problem was the fact those stacks had 12-13 movement points and could engage in multiple combats per turn (because of stacking movement spell) which has been fixed. In huge maps it's a serious handicap running with all heroes in one stack what with limited movement and 1 battle only mechanic.
Last but not least Legendary heroes a game of parking heroes and having uber troops that are superior to heroes.
Huh? It's actually the other way round. Armies used to be limited to 1 battle per season only and now this limit has been lifted so you can attack several stacks per turn.
The game should at least give some visual feedback (icon + mouseover description) on the character screen about that splitting mechanic. Of course the values should reflect the actual hero stacking. Even better, remove the splitting.
XP splitting is for sure not the biggest problem heroes have in LH, but I hate the idea of being punished (and if only slightly) for building teams of two heroes. Champion #2 actually would come really handy early game, when I am really busy with empire building and cleaning lairs in the neighberhood with my weak forces. Even every single pioneer that has to be produced just hurts at that point by blocking the build queue. Unfortunately, my new mate turns out to be neither on par with early regular troops, nor is he allowed to follow his souvereign so he moves to the next city and I take the time and dedicate my build queue to another group of spearmen.
Of course I can see the problem that removing the xp split would (in fact) force us to stack heroes together just for experience point maximization. I think a good compromise here would be to have a cap of two champions per stack. This way #3 and #4 would build my second team and command their own army (please fix them anyway by bringing them on par to regulars of their "time").
BTW, I would also love to see an option to turn later heroes into commanders, because I for one have absolutely no use for more than four of them other than sitting in town.
when i go dual heroes from the start, i'll build the tower first, so the first champ is unlocked after 8 turns or something. my favorite champs for dual hero teams are defenders, so if i get a chance to pick hannis or inslow (play mostly kingdoms, don't really know the empire heroes by name) i'll get them and turn them into a tank ASAP. other good choices that i used successfully are iriel (starts with life 2 -> useful as a healer from the moment you pick him up) or badra as assassin (got lucky with her - found a toxic shortbow in a blue treasure chest, made her pretty deadly right from the start). depending on what champ i picked up, the sov will usually pick a path that complements the champ. can be anything, really, as long as you can somehow turn them into a into a proper team with some synergy (commader + warrior, or tank & healer, or tank & assassin, whatever).
in my experience over the last 5-6 games, an early defender champ is really awesome. they actually don't need long to become very tough. at level 4, they have defensive 1&2, which puts them at a quite respectable 30 defense naked (obviously more if you pcik up/buy some cheap leather items). even without gear, a defender champ can tank 3-4 groups of swarming mites, darklings, some wolves, bandits etc. use them wisely (retreat unarmored troops on turn 1, let the tank get the enemies' attention, then move forward with the spearmen/militia and flank them, kill them one by one; the other champ can heal, slow, do damage, command or whatever).
maybe i'm just lucky, but in my experience, if you push hard and try to do tough encounters early, your champs will level up reasonably fast despite the split, and grab some decent items that would otherwise go to waste. it's just great to pick up a "warding kite shield" from some low quest that will skyrocket your defender's efficiency, or clear that corpse spider lair on turn 25 and find a razor sword that turns your level 5 warrior into a beast that can onehsot strong single mobs with >100 crits, picking up that stuff later isn't all that impressive, but a nice early item drop can turn one of your guys into a real powerhouse 50 (or more) turns before your troops can get even close to what he can already do.
in my current game (huge/epic/expert/dense monsters/quests/wildlands) i never split up my dreamteam (healer sov and tank champ) and they did some quite impressive stuff together, such as killing a giant rock spider guarded by 3 rock spiders and 4 packs of spiderlings, or stumbling into that dreaded umberdroth & stone golem lair in the pits of namtur and killing 3 umberdroths and half a dozen stone golems (unfortunately only one of their 3 spearmen units survived that fight), or killing several stacks of 3 crag spawns & 3 earth shrills before turn 50, or routinely killing "deadly" death demon/fire lord/earth elemental lairs with nothing but spearmen as backup, or wiping out the cindercorpse lair from the skeleton event. that game is on epic pace, so obviously you'd have better troops much sooner on standard tech pace, but in my book, those two heroes aren't underpowered or useless - they are basically the driving force behind my whole faction. by now, the game is pretty much won, it's turn 180 or something, they are both ~ level 15 i think and can kill pretty much everything on the map, when my best available weapon techs right now are daggers and axes.
when i picked up LH and played the early versions of it (0.50) heroes sucked, because their level progress was really painfully slow. after 2 flat XP bumps and the recent change of bonus XP for harder encounters, i find them very solid. not saying other strategies aren't viable, but my heroes feel very legendary when i play a hero based game. i *probably* could have won that same game without a second hero, but it would have been a lot slower and more painful (i.e. replace dead spearmen after every fight).
I also don't like the way XP is divided in relation to having more than one hero in the same fight. In my current game I have three heros in the same group (just getting ready to split them among 2-3 groups. But with my research my 5 man troupes with all their armor and weapons are vastly superior to my under-leveled heroes. Its really disappointing. They would be fine had their levels not been dragged down so much by shared XP. But that's where things stand in my current game.I also feel that adjusting the shared XP and removing XP bonus traits would help alleviate this issue. And... the current xp split really isn't fun as it forces the player to consciously make a decision about how to split their troupes and heroes for leveling purposes rather than true strategic purposes.
This is really well put. The design problem is to minimize XP greed and XP maximization from strategic consideration. These are the ugliest parts of rpgs, if you have a limited rpg aspect to your game you don't want the ugly side on prominent display.
XP Traits- Leveling up to level up faster is XP greed at its purest and most insane. The way it works form what I have read here in the threads is that there is a breakeven point somewhere in mid to late teen levels, so you spend most of the game underleveled to be a level or if you really grind and grind two up at the end of the game (the xp requirements are exponential, so it is trading the away quick levels for the slow ones later). People do insane things in rpgs, grind and grind, pay hundreds of dollars for higher numbers in Diablo 3... this is not the side you want to show in a game that is half or less rpg. Please get rid of leveling up to level up later.
XP Split- This is one is tougher I guess, because the XP economy is something to consider. If most players are comfortable putting 3 heroes together for the whole game and the greed doesn't shift the other way with 9 hero stacks that some people must do because it maximizes XP, then it is probably a great success. If almost everyone who plays for fun makes their sovereign a loner because they don't want to hurt the development of the game piece they have the greatest ego identification with, then the design isn't for playing for fun.
If you take Potential at level 3, you will be level 21 at approximately the same time a champion who did not take Potential is level 20. This is the first time at which the 'Potential' champion will be a full level ahead, so at that point the two champions will be equal in terms of 'real' traits. The 'Potential' champion will never in a normal game get a second full level ahead, though they might gain fractional level advantages if there is sufficient XP on the map. If there were enough experience and enough traits, then you'd be able to get the 'Potential' champion up to level 43 at the time when the normal champion would be level 41, and this would be the first time that the 'Potential' champion has an extra real trait.
A champion who is given Knowledge at level 3 gets to level 13 at the time when a normal champion would be level 12, and can be level 27 at the time a normal champion is level 25. These are the earliest points when a Knowledge champion would be one or two full levels ahead of a normal champion.
A champion who takes Knowledge at level 3 and Potential at level 4 reaches level 10 at the time a normal champion reaches level 9, and reaches level 18 when the normal champion reaches level 16. At level 18, the Knowledge/Potential champion has as many real traits as a level 16 champion, so this is (roughly) the break-even point. At the point when a normal champion would be level 24, the Knowledge/Potential champion is level 27, giving them their first level where they have an extra real trait compared to the normal champion for the same amount of unmodified experience. At the point when a normal champion would be level 33, the Knowledge/Potential champion could be level 37, assuming there is enough experience on the map.
The break-even point is (in terms of normal champion levels) level 20 for Potential, level 12 for Knowledge, and level 16 for Potential and Knowledge (this might shift slightly depending on the order in which you take them, but not by much, and certainly not by a full level - the experience required for each level goes up as the square of the champion's level). The points when you get your first 'extra' trait are level 41 for Potential, level 25 for Knowledge, and level 24 for Potential and Knowledge (again, these are the levels of the champion you would have if you did not take the experience-boosting traits).
Thus, these traits are mostly for long games, and in my opinion should only be taken on a champion who gets a large benefit from having additional levels (e.g., a spellcaster whose primary spells deal damage for each level of the champion).
Thanks Joe, I've been wanting someone to give some numbers regarding these "OP" traits and how not worth it they generally are.
I do take potential first if I plan on using Defender sovereign + Paragon abuse, but that's all.
Nice analysis JoeBall, very useful info.
I agree, thank you for the analysis JoeBall. For a long time many people posted that they felt they had to take those traits, I think with that analysis there would be very few who would. But I bet many new players will feel they have take them too.
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