vpchelko wrote:
And Wildwalkers orange tree completely useless for military hero.

That is pretty much the crux of the problem. Namely a skill set that is neither one thing or the other, leaving you with a generic unit.



The other side to this problem is when you spin this on its head and have a city governor. What's the point of it being a playable unit?



So if a hero skill set could be specialised between military and governor, than I'd like to see the governor skills section include some buffs to defence, counter attack, and healing on defending units; Otherwise there isn't much point in it being a playable unit as it would just sit in a city until attacked and as it wouldn't be a particularly strong soldier in mid to late game, that makes for a "critically wounded" hero (not dead).



Currently there are various skills that fall into the category of a governor unit, but they are largely faction dependant or spread across the skill tree, leading us back to that generic unit issue again. Or as my Grandmother puts it - it's neither Beast or Fowl.

indigav wrote:


So if a hero skill set could be specialised between military and governor, than I'd like to see the governor skills section include some buffs to defence, counter attack, and healing on defending units; Otherwise there isn't much point in it being a playable unit as it would just sit in a city until attacked and as it wouldn't be a particularly strong soldier in mid to late game, that makes for a "critically wounded" hero (not dead).

Units never actually defend a city. Rather they LEAVE the city and attack. So, at this point, "city defensive" skills are pointless unless maybe your standing on a district, but then any hero can stand on a district, not just governors.

The main problem I have with hero's currently is that the low tier skills seems just as powerful, if not more powerful on occasion, to the mid and high level ones. Gaining 1 ranged attack for an entire skill point in the third tier seems a bit lacking.



That and that unlike ES, only some hero's give a bonus to cities where in ES even the admirals had some governing skill. This however isn't too much of a hassle as you don't seem to have a limit to how many heroes you can have and if need be you can sell them on the market and buy a governing hero, though that seems to be a bad idea. From what I've seen you only get like a 10th the price selling as you do buying. Plus, given that it's a fantasy setting and not a sci-fi one, it makes sense that some hero's are purely adventuring or general types.



And a slight side bar, the Cold Operator skill doesn't seem to be working for armies right now as I am still losing half of my armies movement in winter after gaining it.

In ES I think the number of leaders was effectively limited and the three to four leaders that you developed were in the end always fleet leaders as the effect of these leaders was so important that winning or losing depended on having the better fleet leader and them staying alive and out of bed, so to say ;-)



Personally this made ES somewhat a one way road. Get leaders established quickly and have them always ability-wise ahead of the crowd and winning was easy (easier).

Leaders should be important, but not alone game winning.



Therefore I like them to die in battle, if they are positioned too aggressively and / or the enemy concentrates on the particular kill. (Is that happening in EL, I did not run into an according Scenario, so I did not loose one yet.)





So in EL we should have governors and army leaders that have some potential for a mixed skill set, ie a front line City governor has the Food enhancing skill +30 (5+10+15 for three Levels of Food) or something similar for production, mixed with some battle skills to fend of minor invasions. (We Need a working Version to include the governor into battles together with the garison, but I assume that will be fixed....)

In Addition we have the troop leaders as most comments above indicate the people currently use most and the governors for the inner regions of your empire for the empire builders like myself.



So the important aspects in my eyes are:

- Leaders get more expensive, but there should not be a Limit concerning the number you can have.

- Governor skills should be further devided in specializations (Food, Research, dust, etc.) which the current model allows for. (Not everyone is good at everything, so it is good that a leader only has development potential in some areas.)

- Similar for the Military leaders, although the Basic first Level skills seem obvious (Walking distance, sight), but the potential (1 or more Levels) could be different.

- Leaders die more easily, the mega-super leader must be easier to kill, even if we usually "cry" when he is lost ;-)))



The freedom of choice how my leaders develop is I think the key question (as mentioned several times above):

I think leaders have personal properties, ie each has a different development potential. This is currently represented by the individual development trees.

I would suggest (as some people said above) that the access to the different development potentials should not be as restrictive as a tree, ie it is not required to take skills on the "lower" levels.

The price of each development step should be related to the value it represents for an average Player.

The experience Points could essentially be the currency that is used to buy the skills.



In the end I think I am saying, do the leader development similar to how the traditional RPGs are doing it (wide area of choices where you can invest), and therefore really allow for the direct investment of experience points.

Levels are only used to show how much experience the leader has accumulated during his lifetime, but otherwise they are irrelevant.







For the none RPG types you might need to offer 4 or 5 standard careers they can choose from to develop their Heros, without doing something themselves.



I hope this somewhat summary view of some of the above comments helps Focus the discussion towards a specific buildable solution we want ;-)





PS: I am sorry I did not play ES for quite a while, so I do not remember the ES model in all details.

In ES I think the number of leaders was effectively limited and the three to four leaders that you developed were in the end always fleet leaders as the effect of these leaders was so important that winning or losing depended on having the better fleet leader and them staying alive and out of bed, so to say ;-)

Hero numbers are limited by the techs you have researched in ES. By the end of the game you'd typically have about 8 hero slots available and it was up to you if you wanted to fill them all.

Therefore I like them to die in battle, if they are positioned too aggressively and / or the enemy concentrates on the particular kill. (Is that happening in EL, I did not run into an according Scenario, so I did not loose one yet.)

It's not happening as you suspect. The hero can be wounded to the point they are withdrawn from the map and whatever they were attached to. They then need to rehabilitate before being re-attached to either an army or city. Some buffs are available in their skill tree to heal faster. I'm not sure if they automatically re-attach to their previous post. I've never had one that wounded yet

- Leaders get more expensive, but there should not be a Limit concerning the number you can have.

Each Hero costs more in the market and is split between open and exclusive hero units. Those that are exclusive steadily increase in cost as the counter for their exclusivity ticks down. Once it reaches 0 they either disappear or become available on the market like the others. Those on the open market have their cost move according to the demand. I'm not sure how this works, but I've not noticed any getting cheaper



As for how many hero units you can have. To the best of my knowledge this is purely down to your economy and if you can afford to support them. Each time a hero increases their skill they also increase their maintenance cost to your economy.

The price of each development step should be related to the value it represents for an average Player.

The experience Points could essentially be the currency that is used to buy the skills.

Heroes gain XP slowly over time and is boosted by activities such as battles, (another reason why it's easier to use your hero unit to lead armies, aside from the need to explore and complete quests) which allows the purchase of the next skill in the tree, or to boost one you have already. As far as I know this is a steadily increasing amount, but I'm not sure if it's a flat scale or dynamic based on the game difficulty and other factors.



I think though you're referring to something mentioned above where as the skill level increases (Lvl 1 - Lvl 3 currently) that the cost also increases to reflect its value. This is similar to how the Tech Tree works and I for one would love to see this system implemented for the Hero Skill Tree. It could be xp related or as in the Tech Tree, require a minimum number of lower based skills before becoming available.



Another aspect that I'd love to see repeated from the Tech Tree is bonus techs (or bonus skills for Heroes) that appear from a successful quest. This would do wonders to make the game interesting and for the games longevity as well as a wonderful tool for modders.

Starfire512 wrote:
Units never actually defend a city. Rather they LEAVE the city and attack. So, at this point, "city defensive" skills are pointless unless maybe your standing on a district, but then any hero can stand on a district, not just governors.

I'm referring to garrisoned units within a city. They do defend the city though I understand what you mean about the units leaving the city and acting as any other battle.

If you have a number of units garrisoned along with a hero attached to the city, then when the city is attacked the hero has buffs that effect the garrisoned units.

Sad, but looks like tech tree way is completely rejected by devs, found it on the black list in feedback thread.

But i hope devs have something good in their minds for skill trees ,that will make everyone happy.

It would be nice if there were classes and each class with a different talent tree. (ranger, cleric, swordsman etc.)

I see I'm in the minority, but I quite like the current system (Obviously I wouldn't argue with more variety in it, mind you).

I look forward to the Calvary and Flying hero tech trees, speaking of which anyone find it odd that the Ardent Mages have a Support hero, but no support units in their faction, just saying

Your point about the city skills being mixed in the same branch with the army skills is something I have noticed as well. This might be my biggest current issue with the system as it is now. When I hire someone as a governor he is probably going to stay in one city or the other. To have to waste some of his promotions taking an army skill grates a bit. The reverse is just as true for my army commanders. There are some skills I may never take because of what comes before them in the tree.



Just thought of an idea that I'd like even though it'll go nowhere, have some generic skill, say +4 HP for army heroes and something minor but suitable for city governors. Have this option as an alertnative to the skill on the tree. By that I mean, I can take the box with the skill I don't want so as to unlock the next part of the tree, but instead of the listed skill I can take the generic one as an alternative.

Hero abilities seem to be a little confused. I'm not sure if we have race specific skills mixed in with affinity and class or what. It would be really useful if the hero skill tree actually had these in them as the selecting of a Hero from the market would actually become important. Otherwise it really doesn't matter as they will all be the same with the exception of how many life points they have (58 to 101 in the first 75 turns. Wow that's a steep curve)



For the new to Amplitude the management info on what Hero's do is missing. For instance does a Hero have to be in a city to give the research or dust bonus? Does it effect only the city or all empire? Does it stack? Does the Hero have to be inside the players borders to receive the bonus? These questions have as yet no clear answers in game and as such I feel it reduces the enjoyment and attraction to the new. It's also a common gripe for ES as everyone was trying to figure out just what stacked and how it worked.

Each faction has race specific skills mixed in, though usually they tend to be in the orange category (far right). Also, each skill has a small note with it saying that it is either general, governor (requires being assigned to a city), or army specific. Also, there are apparently two branches to army - exploration related and combat related.



If you are talking about the special attributes listed for each hero, yes, you are correct. They are not defined (sharp senses does what?) and they don't explain when they are active - though I would say that army bonuses seems simple enough to apply to only an army they are attached to.

I agree that the army related bonuses seem straight forward. I'd expect that the bonuses will stack with any unit or civ bonus so that you'll end up with super abilities to an army that has a specific hero attached.

sharp senses does what?

Absolutely.



The game also seems to be lacking in intuition when it comes to applying bonuses. I would expect to see more clearly defined icons (which I think is the right way to go, rather than a wall of text) that show when a bonus is applied only in a city, empire, world wide, etc.

It would be very helpful if the heroes had a destinct classification (e.g. "Wildwalker Ranger", "Vaulter Ranger", etc.). A preview option for the skill tree (and possible already distributed skills) would also be nice.



In general I place a hero in every city I have. Their cost are very low compared to potential benefits. I haven't used too many combat oriented heroes so far (and thus no idea how powerful they actually are), but I always try to equip my main army with one.



I don't really like the hero ability trees. I often feel that I have to pick a lot of useless skills to get what I actually want. Many high and mid tier abilites are terribly situational for the price of a skillpoint...

3ntf4k3d wrote:
It would be very helpful if the heroes had a destinct classification (e.g. "Wildwalker Ranger", "Vaulter Ranger", etc.). A preview option for the skill tree (and possible already distributed skills) would also be nice.



In general I place a hero in every city I have. Their cost are very low compared to potential benefits. I haven't used too many combat oriented heroes so far (and thus no idea how powerful they actually are), but I always try to equip my main army with one.

I tend to do exactly the same with hero placement from ES strategy, as the benefits outweigh the cost. However as this is all about helping the dev team out and getting a better game, I have used my hero's exclusively in battles and those battles being manual. The Hero is way superior to the standard grunt in the game and seems to gain XP from staying alive. I like the concept of the skill tree but find it's missing something and I hope that the Hero's will become distinct from one an other.

Even though I am a bit disappointed with the current skill system, the racial variety is definitely there and not just in the orange branch on the right.



In the blue on the left some heroes start with getting more defense for themselves and then more HP for their armies. Others start by getting more MP for the army and then better vision range. There is a brief summary on the market screen that gives you some idea of what bonuses the heroes will bring.



Still I can't help but feel that these heroes seem much less influential to the overall game than those in ES did. This was probably a conscious design decision to make them so. At least here they get to fight directly (though like ES none of them ever die.)

Still I can't help but feel that these heroes seem much less influential to the overall game than those in ES did. This was probably a conscious design decision to make them so. At least here they get to fight directly (though like ES none of them ever die.)

That's that steep climb from relatively hard to you're having a laugh, right? He's how hard? (all in the first 75 turns). I'd rather they have a real chance of dying and a button in the battle stages that allows your army to flee. You receive a hit or choose a unit as cover (which is likely lost) but you live to fight again. You can add more by wiping off an % of xp due to running away. (Harsh, but there seems no other way as there is no such thing as reputation in the game)



I'm just not sure where the affinity/racial variety is in the Hero's. It seems scattered, which in itself is not the problem, rather the lack of info on choosing the right one. Or should we just go for a random selection on the Hero skill tree at selection so the game is never the same? Bit of a bummer though if you're really looking for that ranged Hero with buffs to distance.

3ntf4k3d wrote:
A preview option for the skill tree (and possible already distributed skills) would also be nice.

Click on the magnifying glass for each hero in the marketplace. You can see what skill tree you're getting and skill points available/assigned.

Definitely agree that the initial skills (the ones in the box to the right under their stats) the hero comes with lack clear information for the player, you have to look up the bestiary to get an idea of what the skills actually do. This could be easily remedied with some clear tooltips as to what the skills do.



Think I have to disagree with Dalwin's sentiment about the heroes not having that much of an effect though. In my experience, they've always made a pretty big difference (and, I think, one of the major reasons why the AI is so easy to beat right now); I always want to have at least one ranger hero with the move speed buff (being able to move 10 hexes with the empire boost is so good) and some of the upper tier governor skills are really good (%-boosts to resource, negating expansion disapproval, additional output from strategic/luxury resource deposits, etc.). The only ones which are lackluster at the moment are the Vaulters' heroes, because half of their skills are unimplemented.



I think there's decent enough variety between the skills trees in terms of race, which seems to affect the orange skills, and class, which seems to affect the blue skills. There isn't much variety within the groups though, all the Wild Walker heroes are ranged, all the Broken Lords heroes are infantry, and so forth. I'd like to see a little more differentiation there.