There seems to be a lot of debate on the usefulness of champions. I have outlined my thoughts and potential solutions below.

Issues:

-          They don’t seem to scale well in the late game compared to squads of soldiers

-          Imbuing them with magic isn’t really worth it due to the (current) low power of magic

-          A hero that provides a city bonus can’t both provide a bonus and increase in power

-          The cost of equipping a hero is too high (I disagree)

-          Heroes seem pretty generic

Solutions:

-          Upon leveling, each hero (and Sovereign IMHO) should get an automatic HP boost along with the choice to boost an additional stat

-          I think magic is due for a bit of balancing and as time  goes on more spells will be added and this issue will fix itself

-          Heroes should be broken down into two categories “Governors” and “Generals”.

• Governors are the ones who provide +20% to farming type bonuses
  • Each city can only have one governor
  • Each time a city levels up the governor levels as well
    • Along with the normal stat increase he also gets a boost to his governing ability (+30% to farming)
• Generals are the guys that lead the troops into battle
  • They should level up like they do now, but with the default HP boost.
  • Their abilities should affect the entire army they are with. Ex:
    • +10 Morale
    • Ability to set up troops before combat starts
    • Increased Initiative (I think troops move based on initiative so the highest initiative troops act first regardless of side)
    • Bonus to Attack or Defense
• You could have additional Hero types such as Adventurers who get increased movement, sight, better quest rewards. I think the Governor and General roles are the most important in this model.

-          Equipping cost is often cited as a problem. This can be and will be tweaked as we move forward. Additional and more diverse equipment will be added to the game at a rapid pace through Stardock and the modding community.

-          Refining the roles as stated above will help alleviate this issue.

Final Thoughts:

The strength of Elemental is in its engine and in that SD has done an amazing job. Having such a strong foundation to work with will make a large majority of the community complaints go away as time goes on. SD has stated and clearly shown their high level of dedication to the game and I think we will all see the game improve by leaps and bounds in the coming weeks.

I assume they are currently working on the stability of the game and once that is ironed out for all users they will focus more on adding new content in the way of items, heroes, techs and spells. In the mean time we already have a thriving modding community that will be putting out new content as well.

At the end of the day SD has given each of us the tools to mod to game to play as we see fit. The tools are at your fingertips, if you don’t like something then adjust it in the XML.