How many wildlands did you come across? I noticed that heroes are better suited to fighting against these greater enemies. I to walked up and down the other factions, but the world creatures, wildlands, and level 4-5 quests were about right for level 10-15 heroes. I would like to see more able AI factions before we start nerfing heroes. 

What kind of attack/defense stats did you have?

I am trying very hard to stay on normal difficulty for the beta so that I have the same experience as the others. Is everyone else not doing that?

well i never play games  at difficuly below the max in single player, it just doesnt make sense to me, but ofc this is a beta so for now im at normal too (also i remember something about higher diff levels not working yet so maybe its the same)

I have to agree. I've played two games of several hundred turns, and one shorter, and my champions are hideously strong.

I steamroll the AI completely, and I can disregard the loss of my cities since, provided at least one hero survives, the whole stack survives.
This means that lumping all your superior gear into one killer character ensures you can use the others as meatshields while he/she kills the mobs.

Getting the few levels needed to become unstoppable is just a matter of scouting around for juicy targets early to get a head start.

The problem seem mainly to be all the sweet, sweet loot. It makes the heroes virtually unkillabe. The only mob I have been unable to kill so far is the Pyre. He is strong, but the only reason I didn't manage to kill him is that I had only two heroes at the time. If I brought backup I suspect it would be easy.
Case in point: The two heroes I mentioned had soloed everything on the map for me so far.

• Heroes scale incredibly well with equipment.
• Equipment seems inherently too strong. As an example, getting a hold of a battle axe and some armor pieces early means you can laugh in the face of almost anything early game, and allows you unhindered levelling.
• Military tech scales too slowly compared to hero levelling, and military units take a fair while to produce and require a lot of resources. This means that heroes can go unchecked for ages before units can be put against them, and then they are too weak to put up a fight. I have yet to face a military unit I couldn't slaughter without blinking.
• Sidenote: Mage units, if you choose to not build them as tanky warriors (which is really the only truly useful way of building a hero) are glass and no cannon. Magic is no match for the incredible abilites granted to the warrior/assassin/defender path.

I've mainly concentrated on this tactic so far, but when trying a more military oriented style I got really  frustrated since rebuilding the units lost is expensive and time-consuming.

What I'm seeing is that melee champions gather in power a lot faster than you can research and train units in cities. They are very strong in the early- and mid-game. I think you guys are underestimating the strength of magic - in particular, the offensive skills of empire Death magic is very valuable at even the lowest levels in the game. But they still use mana, and it does run out sooner rather than later. A melee champion never runs out of juice.

I haven't really encountered this scenario which I am about to explain, but I do think magic can be used to counter champions - especially debuffs. Take a Shrink spell, add a Curse spell, and so on. Melee champions do have a weakness - they have low spell resistance compared to casters. The reason this is only a hypothetical scenario is that the AI doesn't seem very keen on using spells effectively for this purpose, to counter champions.

I agree with Heavenfall that melee champions out pace casters. I would consider making intelligence count toward spell damage/effectiveness in some way.

Considering the cost of army upkeep versus the cost of champions, champions as many as you can get are the only way to go.

I would like to see a better balance struck in upkeep costs. Maybe reduce the cost of armies stationed in a city? What are the downsides to going with a champion as opposed to an army?

Didn't get the beta this week (UGH!), but I watched a game last night where upper-level heroes were getting whacked by any number of things.  Everyone in the chat was agreeing that it really is a much more dangerous world.

As far as WoM goes, I only make units to defend my cities.  I tpically take *one* champion, buff him up with intelligence and spells, and annhilate every other faction and their cities (playing on hard--150%).  All you would have to do is learn the fire and water tree, get intelligence high enough to cast spell immunity, firestorm and blizzard, buy some legendary armor, sword of vengeance and all the amulets and rings, a fast mount (spider, etc., that can make 4 or 5 moves/turn) and you can knock out a city with 900 defense rating with that *single* character and not take a hit.  To me, that was way out of balance.  A master mage, first of all, shouldn't be able to wear Legendary Plate Armor and weild a powerful sword.  And even if you could make such a character, why do all of the enemy heroes only hit you with arcane arrow???  AI deficiency?  Seems like they balanced a lot of this with encumberance--limiting what you can carry based on strength.  Also, the monsters seem a *lot* more buffed.  Champions should be more powerful than any other unit--especially at higher levels--but not god-like.  I have no idea if the enemy heroes are any tougher, but they should develop much more than they did on WoM, and in the very least cast area-of-effect spells or crippling single-unit spells.

I'll take a spin when I get the beta and see if my opinion changes.  What difficulty setting were you playing on?

I disagree. Just because you are ignoring normal units and beating easy opponents doesn't mean champions are too powerful. Don't forget that normal units level too, and all their gains are multiplied by the size of their stack. Traits that increase their base con and str, and magic rings that add elemental damage can be ridiculously deadly when you multiply it by 5. My first game I played around with just champions, I had 4 of them and my most powerful one was a magic user throwing fireballs that devastated entire armies in one cast. My second game I focused more on normal units, and my most powerful units on the map make my champions look like sissies. I have a group of mounted spear units (upgradeable) with +con and +str traits, and some magic rings, and by the time they hit level 6 they were just ridiculous, over 100 health and doing 80 damage with a normal melee attack (ignoring 66% armor).

IMHO -  Limit the number of champions in a single army to 1 or 2 which will remove the problem of the killer stack. 

This would help push some champions into the cities for defense.

naa this is bad

the problem you guys still dont get is ai is dumb and its all

ofc you can freefam with a 4 5 champions cause ai enemies never attack you els4where and even the beasts are not rally a good threat

otherwise keeping a side so strong or farming quests etc with champions should be too risky since you would leave your cities undefended

once they tune monsters with more random attacks and enemy sovereigns with some more aggressive playstyle maybe things will change

I think something as simple as a nerf to how fast heroes gain levels might be enough to fix this problem. Also anytime a hero dies in battle even if you win they should get an injury.

Spear will ignore 66% of armor and is the only attack type that no armor can get extra defense against. It pretty much owns once you get some wargs and 6 person units. But I am a Tarth player so it might not be the best for you guys. I have Mounted Archers to back me up.  

Sarudak is right about heroes needing to get an injury from dying. I am starting to suspect that they wanted to avoid the opposite of these complaints i.e. that heroes get too many injuries and don't level fast enough for it to be any fun. They likely went on the other end of the spectrum to make sure the opening beta was fun for us. I remember putting 100 rings of endurance on my champions in WoM's beta and taking on Lord Elementals.