So far it seems like the idea I proposed is the only one that really fixes anything or comes close to fixing it anyway. However it seems there is a misconception or two so allow me to try and explain it a bit more thoroughly.

The idea is that you get a starting soft level cap of say 4 or perhaps a bit higher depending on difficulty. now by "soft level cap" it doesn't mean you get to level 4 and then stop gaining experience, you simple just gain it more slowly. For example I offered reducing it down to 25-35% or basically 1/4 of what they would normally gain. That is until you researched the right techs and brought the soft cap up another few levels where upon they would gain experience as normal until they hit that cap level again and then slow down till the next level extension tech is reached.

The entire purpose of this is to bring heroes more in line with, well, just about everything else in the game. As currently they simply can level too quickly and leave every other viable option for a military in the dust. I don't know about you but I personally do not consider that balanced.

Also as a side note. I personally think making it easier to kill heroes is a horribly bad idea. make them take penalties every time they fall in combat sure, but easily killing them, no. Making it a checkable option for people that want ironman games would be fine but otherwise I'm pretty sure quite a few of us would just reload every time one of our heroes dies. Also a potentially costly way of removing wounds would be nice...

I would like to see an exponential or quadratic function governing cost. Obviously fewer heroes will reach 10+ levels so you should really pay for there service or dismiss them. Fantastic idea.

There is an entire other thread about how overpowered armies are in comparison to heroes, and that armies need to be nerfed because they so badly outlcass heroes.

Regular armies are better in the late game. Heroes can get godlike within 30-100 turns, depending on how good of a starting location you get. They just need to take out +1/level bonuses and make it harder to level in general. That way it will scale better with the regular army. 

As to a regular army in the late game, any equipment they get can be bought by heroes. Fireball owns any of the larger units. I would like to see better AI all around and hero fixes before the regulars get nerfed. At the most you might want to make it harder for them to level as well. They currently get 50% of the XP a hero does. 

armies are no serious threat to any good hero. what most of you overlook is that the attack and hit points of any army get added, but the combat rolls are separate, i.e. if you have an army with impressive stats they will still deal no damage to a hero and also die really fast to any aoe effects. perhaps this due to the really bad ai at the moment, but i never found any serious threat to my heroes. if you know how to level them and where to get equipment there is nothing stopping you and certainly not armies (say hello to fireball).

there are currently two things that make heroes really overpowered:

1) stats that work like +x /level (say hello to 140+ dodge, 30 initiative, 500+ dmg with crits and a crit chance of 50+...)

2) high level heroes of the opposite alignment that you can easily kill early on to get powerful items

There is nothing wrong with a level cap, MoM had one for both armies and heroes.  For the heroes though, you want that cap damn high, and it should be exponentially harder to level, whereas now it at least feels like level 2 is as easy to achieve as level 12. To fix it though I would:

• If a hero dies but you win the battle, it's the same as if he died and you lost

• Also as someone commented, what would help is a single slot for misc, right now I can stack a ton of misc crap to increase atk/def.

What really needs a cap are units.  My early game axmen (3) are running around with 200+ hp.  It's absurd.

Imo Frogboy is right, those are way, way too powerful. Generally all my heroes (except for mages) that don't have this perk suck while the others rock.

But I'm afraid now that they get nerfed too much... because on the other hand if it wasn't for those perks then playing a melee would suck in the long run. I mean, have you seen what high level casters can do? Let a good trained caster (many Evoker perks) cast Blizzard than an entire army is defeated. For 3 mana with the right items/perks I believe.

Heroes should be totally awesome, that's what Fallen Enchantress is about and if they get nerfed too much it will destroy the game - at least for me. However I agree my current hero Sakashi is way too powerful

€: but I have to agree, leveling at some point also seems a bit too fast (considering that the heroes are already uber)

€2: Oh I also like limiting the stuff you can put at misc. Maybe 5 or something, it should still be many items but not as much as right now. Possibly 2/4 rings and just one amulett etc.

Perhaps the whole 'overpowered hero' issue is the wrong way to look at this. I mean the idea of slowing down the game a bit has merit.. In fact I fully support the idea of 'soft caps' on levels, but perhaps the issue is that the pace of the other elements of the game (technology) are much too slow.

In the event that you could construct Yew Bowmen (or a comparably equipped army) in stacks of 7  by the time your heroes get their legendary armor/weapons I suspect the matter would be less apparent. Some tweaking needs to be done to initial unit strength, but right now I would prefer the designers focus on speeding the other elements of the game as it is =extremely= difficult to test out the available options when it takes 1000+ turns to accomplish high end technologies.

Increasing tech speed eliminates it as a strategic choice. If you don't want to commit to a normal paced game, you can speed up the tech pace. I am at turn 400 right now and I have most of the techs in the game. I wouldn't want things to be much faster. 

The lack of a penalty for 'death' in a winning battle is a problem and does make champions much more powerful and useful. I also would like this to change. There should be a chance for injury and death, but also healing and resurrection spells. 

If you think champion death is a problem, just look at the Total War series, for example. It works fine there. Consequences are a good thing, as long as they are fair. Treating your unique, special champions like cannon fodder should have consequences.

As for save / reload, that applies to most parts of games, especially games with consequences. If a player decides to reload, that is on them, and it they enjoy that more, then that is ok. If they prefer to accept the consequences, that is also ok. Designing the game around that choice is not good design, IMHO.

I know what you mean. I just lost 20 groups of Cossacks to an Ashwake Dragon. My finger was on the load button the whole time, but I eventually decided to take a break and live with the consequences. 

The game is designed around the idea that the =player= will reload when losing an extremely valuable unit (EI: Champion) and if the computer does not have this luxury it makes the game that much more unblanced in favor of the player. It was a good design decision to have them recieve injuries rather than die. The player might still reload if the injury is devastating enough, but the computer will still have their own army of heroes available.

@seanw3 Currently the option to increase the tech speed is not operational. Perhaps I am alone in this but I suspect you must be supremely awesome at the game to have all the techs by turn 400. In a long standing game I control over a third of the map with roughly 3k population and it is taking me several hundred turns to research the higher end technologies.

I only had a couple of games and I'll take as true that Champions need tweaking but I must say that I do quite fine using normal troops to kill anything.

Bloodthirsty + Charge + Fast + Spear + Learther Armour set (to add some survival). Add the Sovereign and, if possible, a Champion (for special traits that benefit the army and because they can grow to be tanks/dps of legend... Verga was quite legendary mauling dragons in turn 1, inb4 nerf). Develop Groups whenever you have the chance (you want to level up Groups). With that setting, the unit can in most cases reach the enemy lines during the first turn and before the enemies can take their own turn.

My last game (Normal diff) most of the game only had my Sovereign and a Champion (that barely used) along 4 Groups of units like the one I said. The Groups gained so many levels (all level 15 by the end of the game) and were so effective in first turn assault (supported by some Leadership/Tactician), that I never missed the usual Champion Party Only. It's true that at end game they had lose some edge against stronger foes (basic spears, basic armour...) but were still quite good.

I'm quite sure that other type of units can do their role equally well if well leveled and properly supported by their Champion(s).

As for Champions...

Not having permadeath but some random penalties is quite nice to me. I have never suffered it yet but I have seen the enemy Champions broke their noses, lose ears, be amnesic... Quite cool. I'd say that losing a Champion and winning the battle should still have a chance of "penalty" (only lost one and still won so not sure how the system works there).

Some traits are must have (those +1/level) for obvious reasons. And you know what they say about content that is "Must have",

fallen heros regardless of win or loss need to have scars.

BTW my last hero that got taken out was out of action for 26 turns - that is not a light penalty

I didn't realize it was turned off. As to my tech accomplishment, I guess I don't even count the refined techs or the silly ones like Book of the Magi III. Falling Star is decent, but Summer and Twilight are the same damn spell. Not including those I only have 2 left in the Magic tree and about 7 in Civics and Warfare respectively. I get about 400 to research per turn. The trick is to have four high level cities with all the possible research bonuses. With heroes so powerful I spent the early game reaching high up the Civics Tree. Don't know how I rate against other players. 

I would note that the AI doesn't seem to have a very good sense of tech choice beyond basic weapons and leather armor. They are way behind me. I think it's hard to judge pace with no pressure from the AI. 

[EDIT: Just so it's clear: I'm not yet in the beta.  I've read exactly one post where the poster has come to the following conclusion and it was a huge red flag for me.  If others could test and confirm (or deny, for that matter) its truth, I would be most appreciative.]

So, I just found out that the xp gained from a battle is not SPLIT, rather all the combatants involved on the winning side GAIN THE SAME AMOUNT OF XP.  Does anyone else see the problem with this? 

What it means is for every unit in your party, you gain 100% more xp for the battle.  Ad infinitum.

This is absolutely, without-a-doubt, game-breaking. And I'm pretty sure it's not what was intended.

Fixing this mechanic will probably fix 99% of the problems everyone is experiencing (exaggerated, but nonetheless...) regarding heroes leveling to quickly.  All they need to do is split XP evenly among all members of the winning side, and any members that died get no XP for the battle (those XPs are lost forever.)

I =completely= forgot about this! This would certainly solve the out of control leveling. The matter with finding no-tech no-level requisite gear would still prove a bit of an issue, but I wholeheartedly approve of this change, indeed I think I mentioned this in one of brads beta preview posts..

Now If I =want= to level a single champion to godlike status and can somehow survive the battles alone, the ability to do so remains!

Yah, exactly.

Happy to hear this. Hopefully they will adjust the XP given out then.:)

I agree with splitting up the XP.  After all, you can win a battle with some of the participants not even hitting or getting hit, why should all units and champions get full experience?  And it would also solve the champion levelling up too quickly problem.

So the question is, how should the XP be split?

Evenly? Making it based on unit actions is rediculous since it encourages tedious micromanagement to make every unit have a turn.

@seanw3 http://imageshack.us/g/337/turnug.jpg/

Are you sure you're on 'turn' and not 'year' 400? Because according to this I still have several hundred turns to go before I finish up even the next rank of war tree techs with few means of speeding this process aside from 'winning' the game and sitting on my ass for a while.

I meant, split it evenly or give more/less to those of higher/lower level.  For simplicity though, I think it would be best to give each army (multi-unit stacks and champions on the same square each count as one army):

Total experience of defeated units
---------------------------------------
number of surviving winning troops

How about installing a limit on how many heros of certain levels you can have.  Then you can pick and choose whether or not to upgrade your heroes instead of it happening automatically?
Such as:

1 hero unlimited

2 up to lvl 15

3 up to 10

etc, etc

OR

Each empire (depending maybe on map size) has a limited amount of levels it can spread amongst it's heros

You have 50 levels at your disposal.
You can have ONE 50 level guy or 25 level2 heroes..

Just my attempts to think outside the box. Not sure how feasible these would be  (if at all!)

I think splitting up the XP will only lead to single hero or dual hero armies that are still overpowered. My level 18 ranged hero with a movement of 6 and a dodge of 28 (36 against ranged) can win most battles alone.

Thing is that really won't fix anything, it actually has the potential to cause even more problems. By having them split xp you cut their ability to level right from the begining and not just heroes but everyones. the problem with that is, you need to be able to level quckly early on otherwise your ability to expand and do much of anything really is reduced. the whole reason why you get heroes and so easily in the first place is so you can clear the area and collect items to use or sell and if you hurt their ability to level in the begining you are basically just screwing yourself over. So basically if you split the xp between units you are not so much hindering heroes as you are hindering the whole game.