[.86 Suggestion] Recruit all heroes at level 1

Most of my heros I have stolen their souls so I am the master of all magic.

But yes, I prefer when you hire a L5 hero, they have 5 levels of exp but there current level is L1, so as soon as you hire them, they ding and you get to pick their skills. 

If you your the other side, as soon as you attack them, they auto randomly level and you fight them with there newly picked skills.

Or just play on ridiculous level and there will be no hero's to hire anyway (all dead or taken)

A better solution would be to have Hero specific traits that you only get from that hero. It would take alot of work and thought, but it might happen at some point in beta 4. I always wish heroes that have titles like the stonecutter would get +50% damage against stone based units or do an extra 33% penetration through armor. Then we would be getting rare traits from those locked heroes instead of choices we could have made ourselves. I agree, that is no fun.

This.

Brad commented somewhere that each hero has been made unique, possessing something like a Chain Lightning spell or a pet Shadow Demon (saw that in one of his movies).  

^ This.

The problem is not that the heroes are high level when you find them. It's that they lack personality. It's probably going to take a lot of work to make them unique, but I think the end result is worth it.

Colbert30, I agree that it's because they lack personality, but that begs the question what gives them personality?  I'd argue that personality comes from the player, not a paragraph or two of backstory and a handful of unique spells or abilities.  In other strategy / RPG games I've played the interesting heroes were always the ones I leveled and chose the path for. I'm not against having certain heroes have unique paths and abilities (in fact, I'm all for it), but I want to be the one leveling them to unlock those abilities.

I want to recruit the hero an army and have them level to be a general while conquering an AI, or send them solo after a monster lair (which, I might add, are FAR too easy to clear) and see them develop into a powerful mage or warrior.  Maybe one hero gets "killed" at a low level and is too wounded to continue adventuring, so I set them up as the governor of my capitol and they level up there to give bonuses to its food production or crystal mining. 

While I'm wishing, let's take it one step further and make the statement that, in general, leveling up / gaining special abilities is fun in games like this.  So why not make it so trained units can gain abilities as they level?  Instead of a flat HP (overpowered) and accuracy (underpowered) gain, let the player decide if they should grow tougher, or stronger, or better at defending themselves.  It would have to be a much smaller pool of abilities, but I think it would make trained units more fun.

The problem I found with low level heroes appearing later in the game is that, if the game is an advanced enough stage, they can't overcome the experience needed to make them relevant. They just lack the robustness in abilities and stats to compete (or survive).

OTOH, don't forget that champions don't spawn, they are available from the start of the game. So, if they were all low level, they'd all be killed by the time you got to find them and you'd be only left with the ones you found near your settle location.

I think the current system is good. You have the chance to level champions from scratch, but you still can find powerful and unique heroes later on in the game (if only they were unique and powerful, heh).

Low level or high level, it only matters with magic, their combat is about 90% related to the gear you give them.  Would be nice if level 1 heroes didn't have crack baby ability scores.  They seem to have sup-par stats, and high level heroes have very good stats for no real reason, but less abilities for their level.  Either way, it's pretty moot, as all that matters what gear you give them.

Pretty sure that's a balance problem that will be corrected.

They never corrected it in WoM.  It may be a design choice, we will see.

But still, if it was a design choice, the power of items is easily modified. I would not worry about that until the very latest of beta builds. We should rather focus on gameplay elements IMO.

Don't forget that heroes sitting around on the map have to be able to defend themselves from the hostile faction, and this means that they will need those skills that many of you want to be able to designate yourselves after you hire them.

Why even stick with the concept of heroes waiting around on the map?  Just because it's what is done now doesn't mean it has to be that way, and heroes waiting around on the map seems like a pretty silly way to recruit them to me.  Aren't they doing something / going somewhere??  Maybe a level 1 hero is found in an inn, or while on a quest.  Maybe one member of your spearmen squad is incredibly talented and gains hero status.  Or maybe one just shows up in one of your cities offering their services.  There are a ton of better ways to get heroes than the current system.

That seems to be the reasoning behind the current method... but the game can still be changed to accommodate changes that make it more fun

Yes. We've already got quest points all over the map that hide the units inside. Why can't we hide heroes in there, too? The noblewoman you escort confides that she's been practicing archery behind her father's back and wants to help you... after saving a village, a young man's family was killed in the fight and he wants to follow you to seek revenge. You stumble on a witch in the forest who admires your power and wants access to your elemental shards so she can grow stronger. There are lots of ways we could get low-level heroes in the game and still make them desirable, even more so than the first ones you get because you're part of their story.

The way that the heroes hang around on the map isn't necessarily bad, either. They're mercenaries.

It sounds more like it might be nice to have heroes as quest rewards in addition to being able to hire mercenaries.

I do like the heroes that I have leveled up much better, and the ones that start at high level feel sort of impersonal.

Want to add, I am not very fond of the version where heroes reside the map, because it makes early game a rush to buy scouts and rush to grab some heroes, and sometimes you just lie in the middle of kingdomton if your a kingdom, and only get 1 secondary hero, everything else got recruited by the AI, atleast I would appreciate if there were other ways to get heroes (meaby they should start a thread with ideas if they need them).

Also, Later in the game I tend to look at heroes and count theyre number of picks (they usually have less than if I would have levelled a hero for some reason and lvl 1 heroes usually have the most starting with 2-3 abilities. Also count theyre starting attributes, because for some reason some heroes have exceptionally high attributes, though theyre relatively rare as for what I have seen, and usually if they have rubbish str I level drain theyre spirit, or level them give them a magic i dont have and drain theyre spirit because low str, and half the high lvl champions are rubbish >_<...

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

I disagree. If I level up a hero then I can be pretty sure they will be useful but they will probably also be similar to my other heroes (within archetype). Eg if I get a new warrior hero then I will pick the level up bonuses which I think are best, which is probably similar to what I picked with my last warrior hero etc.

Whereas if a high level hero starts already levelled up there is the potential for them to stand out as being quite different from my normal heroes. This is good. Where it becomes a problem is when this new high level hero sucks because the pre-levelled abilities are crap. He has personality but is useless.

The solution IMO is for high level heroes to start pre-levelled BUT in a way that is pretty much guaranteed to make them useful (not necessarily overpowered, but at least useful). It sounds like Stardock are going this route by hard coding deciding what each high level hero has as starting abilities, with the added bonus that this allows them to combine certain abilities together to give them much more personality. I like this so long as they make enough heroes that we don't just run into all the same ones every game.

Give the heroes a few friends to protect them before they are hired. It doesnt solve the stats/level discussion here, but it will force you to think twice before killing them.