This was something that wasn't quite clear.

I remember reading something about merchants and nobles needing to be inside a city in order to contribute their bonus.  However in the tooltips or the (encyclopedia book thing) it doesn't restate that requirement.  So unless you're paying attention (or I'm just making up stuff in my mind) then it's something to easily overlook.

So how much do they lower the XP gain?  I was letting a couple heroes tag along just to increase they're level and abilities so they wouldn't be completely useless if / when attacked later.

Why should the most common type of champion be considered a waste of XP? That's an odd design choice. You would think that leveling them would increase their usefulness in roughly the same proportion that it increases a thief or adventurer champion's usefulness. They're called champions, not "losers that give an okay bonus by early game standards and then become worthless".

Actually, some kind of charge ability (for melee mounted), and increased Def/ HP for all mounted units sounds about right.

at least an army's defense doesn't stack ... it was truly broken when defense stacked.

ah, and for a Champion, just buy 20 defensive amulets or so and equip em on one Champion. Should up the survivability. Then add attack amulets and speed rings when possible. (I know, equipping more than possible game items is broken, but hey it works for now )

and also, it costs thousands of gold ... so its not like your getting it on the cheap

About the unit groups. It needs to be represented that those groups consist of individuals rather than being a singular Voltron-like construct. If you have a 40hp group consisting of four 10hp soldiers, once the group takes 10 dmg it's attack values also needs to go down by a single soldier amount. The current situation with groups is quite poor for the reasons already stated.

Maybe groups could gain bonuses through use of formations and such but we need to feel that the soldiers are individuals.

They don't know where to stand: what are they supposed to be? It's not even like it's left to the player to chose, since the customization isn't really that effective until you put ridiculous amounts of money into it.

As for imbue champions: have it be more cost effective. Way. More. Cost effective.

I agree that champions need a little more buffing to make them more important. I've got my Abilities Mod (in the mod section) to do just that by improving their traits and such. To me champions are just one person. They shouldn't really be able to defeat an entire army by themselves. They should, however, be able to at least stand up to them.

I think of all the action-adventure movies where you have Jack Sparrow or someone fighting an entire base of enemy soldiers. He's not taking them all on at once but usually 1-4 at a time. He can beat them, individually, like this. He cannot, however, do this forever and must retreat or get reinforcements. That can be done in Elemental.

We need the above suggestion about army attacks implemented.

Also, I'd like to see traits and abilities improved. I've got my mod that does this by making most traits and professions gain a "passive bonus" that usually benefits you while stationed in cities. A merchant, for example, gains more gold stationed in a city then in the wilderness. He also gives the city a small multiplier bonus. This makes more sense instead of him scouting the landscape he is remaining in the city trading.

HOWEVER, I've been trying to tie these bonuses to the character's attributes with no success. I need someone to fill in the blanks in the coding here. For example, I want a merchant to gain .2 gold + (1/100) wisdom + (1/25) charisma + (1/30) intelligence/ per turn... how do I code this into the <Modifier> in the .XML. I'm stuck.

I'd also like merchants to gain XP for being stationed in a city. No idea how to implement that either...

They contribute it wherever they are, however there's a lot less chance of them being eaten by a wandering troll in your city centre than in the middle of the wilderness. Or at least I hope that's the case

I don't know if XP is shared or if it's granted per kill, but the larger your force the less XP everyone seems to get, therefore if you want to level your combat guys it pays to streamline the party as much as possible.

Not really. Why would a merchant become a better merchant after killing someone? Their abilities don't increase with levels. As for their effectiveness, bear in mind any NPC you see wandering at the start of the game is chaff, if you research up the adventure tree you will unlock higher level NPC's with much better bonuses, like +prestige to every city you own.

 The other thing to note is that your children tend to inherit a bonus from the NPC parent, so it can be worthwhile marrying a non-combat NPC in the early game so that by the late game you have a veritable army of casters who all contribute to arcane research or the like.

Legolas can fire multiple arrows in a single shot.

(probably not the example you're looking for, eh?)

I really like your suggestions.  It would be nice to have them gain experience some how vs. adventuring.  What if they had "contracts" or "quests" to travel to other cities and establish those caravan routes (or trading routes).  Or they provide a bonus to trade routes - like they're the fat cats who are great at managing trading empires and provide bonuses.  Afterwhile that extra gildar is trivial isn't it?

What I really found interesting are the negatives that sovereigns could take where they provide negative impact to cities where they are at.  The people are like "we appreciate what you're doing but would prefer if you keep your ugly mug out there adventuring, sire".  I don't know if those same traits are found on heroes but that would be interesting.  Offer more gildar for an efficiency penalty?

Well from a role playing aspect, wouldn't people think twice before double crossing him?  + Intimidation

Works for the Mafia.

The way to even it up between stacks and champions in my mind is to simply not have stacks gain more defense, they're already getting the HPs stacking, no reason to let their defense stack as well.

But if none of the attacks can hit him because each guy is rolling 0-10 and the champion is rolling 0-40 on every defense roll, it doesn't really matter how many attacks they get. The vast majority of them will do nothing. Occasionally some will hit so it might work out, but it's not terribly fun to get a constant stream of "miss". (Granted it is better then having your champions constantly one shot by trained groups of random guys.)

This situation is probably the strongest case for a wider array of stats. If you had hit/avoidance as well as attack/defense, you could do this in a more intelligent way.

To hit, each guy rolls against the champion's avoidance. If they hit, they do attack/defense damage rolls, or if defense > attack, a minimum of 1. They won't be doing much to a powerful champion with heavy armor, but if they can connect they will be able to whittle him down. Since you're not going to see the same kind of huge divergence in avoidance most of the time that you do in defense, it'd be less frustrating to play.

Let's not forget that we are talking about a fantasy world here.  Warrior Heroes and Combat MAges should be able to hang in combat.

Maybe some sort of "outnumbering bonus" would work.  If a hero is facing off against a group of regular units the regular units would get a bonus to their attack based on the number of units.  For example, if a champion faces 6 "regulars" the regulars would get a bonus (let's say 50%), but each would still compute their attacks individually.  Instead of one big attack, the unit would get 6 smaller, but still better than their individual attack.

If you're doing separate attacks you could just apply a penalty to defence for each subsequent attack. Say - 10%, so against a party the first soldiers attack is rolling against the hero's full defence, and the final attack is at 70% of the heroes defence. A high level hero could probably still take on a party or small group without breaking a sweat, but when facing off against a virtual army some damage is going to get through.

As a side effect, it would also make group units slightly more useful against the bigger nasties too.

That seems like an interesting Idea. And then have certain large creatures (like Dragons) immune to this penalty.

although, even without good stats, the ABILITIES of a Dragon KICK ASS!!!! Dragon Inferno ftw

indeed, a good idea, and one already implemented by Dominions through their endurance and fatigue stats.

Seriously, how much thought went into this combat system?  Is it going to be moddable?

I just tangled with a Drake. It wiped out my entire veteran army. Annoying thing was my last remaining unit (Sovereign as it happens) got it down to one hit point; I hit it with a Titan's Breath in the hope of either finishing it off or at least forcing it back out of threat range, and not only does the damage "miss", it drops it right on top of it's map exit where it promptly runs away. Gah!

THIS!!!

Indeed, I understand, why attack is higher (10 swords is better than one), why health is greater (10 units have more health), but defense should not stack! The defense for 10 inits is exactly the same as for single, your shield does not become thicker just because there are 10 people with 10 shields. If anything, it is EASIER to hit one out of 10 people than just one (think of archer attacking 10 people vs attacking 1, for example).

DEFENSE SHOULD NOT STACK!!!

I really don't think that's a problem - if you're sending poorly equipped soldiers with 10 attack each against some godlike creature with 100 defense, sure you won't even scratch it 90% of the time, but isn't that the way it should be in such an extreme situation? Practically speaking, it's rare to get single units with 100 defense*, and it's much more common to get single units over 10 attack, so that's taking a rare and extreme case and complaining that the results are.. well, extreme. Really that's exactly the result you should get, given unusually small attack vs. unusually large defense.

[*Edit: or perhaps not so rare, haven't encountered the 891 defense Snathi myself.. jesus, that's ridiculous. Clearly some other balancing issues going on here My point still is, though, that an enemy with defense 10x one of your soldiers' attack should be difficult to kill, not something easily solved by training a stack of 10 soldiers.]

Not necessarily - pooling health together and treating the squad as a single unit for defensive purposes is ok, the key is not stacking defense values. That is to say, a squad of 10 soldiers with 5 hp and 10 defense each should act as a single 50 hp/10 defense unit when it gets attacked. You could think of the first 5 hp as the "first" soldier defending with 10 def, and at 45/50 he's incapacitated and the second soldier is now defending also with 10 def, but that distinction is abstracted away - in gameplay terms a single 50 hp/10 def unit has the same effect. The only difference is whether this unit loses attacks as it loses health - at 45/50 do you stop getting that 10th attack from the soldier you've lost, and get 9 attacks instead? Or just give it 10 separate attacks regardless of health? I'd favor the latter, it's simpler and gives you a reason to still want stacks of units. But either way, it's a massive improvement over the stacking attack/defense values that lead to 10 individuals forming a 50 health/100 defense/100 attack ubersoldier that is exponentially more powerful than the sum of its parts.

I don't quite understand the complaints. If anything, champions are far too powerful. The normal units can do nothing against them. For example, this is a high end champion:

http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/jpnurmin/snathiChild.JPG 

This is a regular champion:

  http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/jpnurmin/powerfulkids.JPG 

With stats like this, I find it that they hardly need any more power.

Anyways, Salrog the Dragon can eat away at the HP of any insane NPC that has uber defense.

Honestly, only HP should stack imho (attacks should be separate, with maybe a +1 group bonus to attack)

I mean, Attacks should be separate ... (and defense non-stacking ofc), yet maybe a +1 to attack (for each soldier) for being in a unit, and maybe have differnet formations (with various bonuses and some penalties) only accessible by larger units.

Basically, it should be the formations that add strength to the large units, not the fact that their attack adds together like a giant amoeba.

and yea, bringing soldiers with 10 attack vs something with 100 defense ... no way thats gonna work without some serious magical support.

Exactly. Neither should attack. They are stacking by the "count" of individual units. Instead of doing that the engine should be swinging and defending for each individual attacker. Meaning if there are 10 units with Def 10 and they get attacked by 10 units with attack 5, then there should be 10 separate attacks and 10 separate defense rolls made. It only take a fraction of a millisecond for even the slowest computers to do the calculations on it. Stacking doesn't make sense from neither a game nor a math perspective. Attacks and Defense don't accumulate because you've got "more" of something, it multiplies. 5 attack times 10 individual swings vs 10 individual defense checks made against attack value 5. It's not rocket science.

You guys read Wheel of Time or played Warhammer 40k? I think we can learn something from both.

In WoT (fantasy book series) there's a bit where a single Aiel, completely unarmoured and unarmed, takes out 8 fully armoured, sword and shield wielding knights, without taking a scratch. And this is just a normal adult Aiel. 

This is a fantasy game, why shouldn't a champion with 40 attack and 40 defense be able to take out a squad of 10 units with 10 attack/defense? 

Warhammer 40k, a fantasy sci-fi tabletop game, has heroes too. In that game, they're pretty damn invulnerable to basic troops. You need high damage or armour piecing weapons to take them out. They also generally one shot basic troops, and have several attacks a combat turn.

The numbers do get one advantage in 40k, and that's bonus attacks when they outnumber their enemy. It's something like 1 extra attack per 4 units. 

40k heroes are also completely balanced even tho they're about 100x stronger then a single basic troop. The catch is they're about 10x more expensive.

Right now, it costs like 10,000 gold to get a champion up 40 attack and 40 defense, yet a 200 gold 60 iron unit completely rolls it. 50x more expensive, yet WEAKER.

Champions aren't balanced AT ALL. They need to be like 5-10x stronger then they are right now (and the multiple attack change NEEDS to be implemented). 

yeah i am throwing my hat in there as well with the guys wanting a change to this.  i like the MoM approach.  each unit attacking and defending.

I don't think the Sovereigns should be demi-gods (in combat at least).  they should get their asses kicked by 10 well trained knights/beasts in melee.  What they should shine at is magic. From afar they should be able to burn, freeze, and shatter a group of ten men to their knees.

I agree that champions needs something extra to be interesting, useful, and memorable. I started a sandbox game and decided to focus on adventuring and building up strong champions. They feel ineffective and give the impression that this is not at all a viable strategy - basically killing the RPG side of the game. My advances in adventuring are opening up interesting quest locations, but my champions are afraid to explore them - not because of the quest location but because of the big stacks of spiders and bandits that are hovering around my borders.

Maybe champions should not be dominant - but they should be able to survive.

One option, on the strategic map, would be to let small groups - a few champions - evade large armies, maybe like a certain well known Fellowship. They can explore the map and get to interesting quest locations - even behind enemy lines.