@Stuie - Thanks and arghhhh! The Magnifying glass. I'm not sure if I've seen this, but I'll keep my eyes open for it. Perhaps it's a new update.

This ties in to a point I made on another thread about there being too much clicking to find what your looking for. I'd like a nice simple button or hot zone to hover over that highlights all the relevant info in one place. At the moment it feels scattered far and wide.



@Lulz! - The Hero's class seems to be based on the race and their base units, so Vaulters get ranged too. I agree that Hero's need to stand out from the crowd so they should be a randomized class rather than following the race base classes. Also hope that the Hero's can be a little more specific in the ability tree - so some are better at civic affinity and others military affinity.



Does anyone understand how the hero market works? At present you get the exclusive Hero for so many turns before being replaced, others have a graph which steadily increases in price and stick around for a lot longer (How much longer I'm not sure). Then the Hero's seem to steadily increase in cost as the game progresses. I get the price increase, I get the count down to Hero leaving, but what is the point of the graph? Does it actually do anything for game play other than a bit of eye candy?

indigav wrote:
Does anyone understand how the hero market works? At present you get the exclusive Hero for so many turns before being replaced, others have a graph which steadily increases in price and stick around for a lot longer (How much longer I'm not sure). Then the Hero's seem to steadily increase in cost as the game progresses. I get the price increase, I get the count down to Hero leaving, but what is the point of the graph? Does it actually do anything for game play other than a bit of eye candy?

If I understand correctly, that little graph tells you the demand of the item in question. In cases where the same item has been bought repeatedly, the price of the item goes up in the market and takes a little while to come down. In relation to the heroes part of the marketplace, it doesn't seem to matter much. I'm not sure why you would ever want to sell a hero to the market in the first place; the benefits they give are so valuable.

Lulz! wrote:
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.

To be fair I didn't say that the influence of the heroes was "not that much". I said it was less than in ES. I think it would be hard to argue this. A levelled up admiral in ES more than doubled the strength of his fleet and added special combat options as well. A highly levelled governer could be a big boost to production or hapiness in his system.



It was most likely a conscious design decision to scale back the hero effect some for EL, probably a good decision. Mine was a comment not a criticism. Though I do think this ties into the heroes seeming a bit more bland than they did in ES as well. The cooler we make them the more powerful they will tend to be. There are play balance issues to consider as well.



If you were active on the ES forums, you probably remember the threads from players saying that if they didn't get the right kind of governor in their initial mix of heroes, the one that most promoted planetary growth, they'd restart the game, even in multiplayer. I never saw it as a big problem but several other players did.

Ah, I see what you're saying. I do remember seeing threads on the ES forums about the strength of administrator heroes (before Disharmony hit at least); comparatively heroes in EL aren't quite as strong, though I think to be fair to EL, the heroes are still in a half-finished state. I feel as though there's still more things to come that would make having a hero in your army or fighting against one more of a factor, maybe even more so than in ES because they are an actual unit. Perhaps they feel a little less strong because the benefits they provide are a little more "invisible"; there's no numerical military strength to buff in EL and such.

I've just been looking at the Hero skill tree and wonder if originally the dev team were considering 4 zones. That would match the 4 skill areas: Army General; Army Explorer; City Governor; Any.



Not sure why the skills to buff a city or army or unit are spread across the 3 zones as is. Would make more gaming sense, to me at least, if the zones where actually for Army, City and Generic/Unit/Explorer.



I see what Dalwin is pointing out. To me the only real option on the ES Hero was if it had a good pairing of skill bases making them a super Hero, like Administrator and Corporate, otherwise it really didn't matter as you could always find a use for them and they kept getting harder. In EL I like the fact that the Hero is way more interactive, I just wish the skill tree made more sense and there were more variation in the Hero's. The amount of time I've had multiple duplicates of the same Hero in the market place is staggering. Hope it's down to being Alpha.

Love 'em or hate 'em they play an important part of gaming strategies.



I have a few thoughts on hero's and wanted to share so here we are with a thread dedicated to the Hero - or villain of the piece.



Jot your thoughts and observations down here and lets see what's what.

I think is an idea worthy of throwing out there and getting some feedback on.

It would also work if each time a Hero was created that the skill tree was randomised in 2 of the 3 zones. That would keep the game fresh.



Now how do we shift this damn thread into the main forum, where it started? You could run a poll and link back to this thread. I'll vote yes.

I think threads that are discussing design elements are proposing alternatives are intended to be in the G2G section. I know I am often guilty of putting things in the wrong section.

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.

As the Hero skill tree is split into Unit Class / Common / Faction Trait, I can see why it's difficult for Admin / Army / Explorer to be the set in the regions, however using your idea and adding the random element this might work.



Another way to upskill the Hero would be to follow the same process the game has for techs; namely each era/level requires x to be researched from an earlier era/level and each time you select one the next goes up in cost. Add that to your idea of an alternative 'Basic skill boost' that is in line with the Unit Class / Common / Faction Trait sectors and we're talking an in-game moddable Hero.

indigav wrote:
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.

Sharp Senses gives a DEF bonus when receiving projectile damage... higher level gives more of a bonus (20%, 30%, 40%)



While the details aren't on the heroes themselves at the end of the Bestiary Manual it gives a list for pretty much all the different attributes that units/heroes/minor factions can have.



Links to the two manuals on the forums:

Bestiary

User Manual

@Atepa



Thanks for that. I was expecting the Bestiary to be a list of minor factions and some background story, rather than having any explanation in it.



Nice links too

Yeah I ran into the same issue when I first went looking through the Bestiary I saw the troops for the major factions then put it aside when it didn't have the info I was looking for. Later I had some free time so was going to read it cover to cover and found the stats modifications at the back.

Some of them are certainly not self evident based on the name. I would have thought sharp senses would be a vision boost rather than missile resistence. I had also thought that Confidence would be something other than a defense buff, based on the name; or that dragonslayer would be something other than additional damage vs all flyers.

Has anyone come across a Hero that isn't Ranged / Infantry / Support?



I get the feeling that there is no flying/cavalry Hero unit.



Also has anyone any clue as to the real use of Support Hero's. They seem so generic due to the skill tree not really supporting specialisation.



@Dalwin - Are you up to adding that poll on the Hero skills as above? I think it's worth doing and don't want to steal your fire so to speak

As much time as I have spent on various forums over the years, I have never set up a poll of any sort. It is not my style.



I certainly have no problem with someone running with any of my ideas. It as all about the exchange of ideas and trying to make the game better, not about getting credit. I never assume that anything I say is original and hasn't been said a half dozen times before.



(well except for my novels. there I have to be original)

Dalwin wrote:
I certainly have no problem with someone running with any of my ideas. It as all about the exchange of ideas and trying to make the game better, not about getting credit. I never assume that anything I say is original and hasn't been said a half dozen times before.

In pieces, probably. With very similar meaning, likely. In the exact same way, very unlikely.



Nonetheless, I'd always argue that a poll is not about claiming originality or ownership, but more about testing the forum waters which out of many options from different people is the preferred one for the forum-subgroup of all EL-players. ^^

I love your modesty and agree with the sentiment of never assuming originality - I've had 2 ideas for patents lost by 1 day to someone else. Shrug, smile, move on.



And agree with the evil genius that is Nosferatiel - It's testing.

indigav wrote:
And agree with the evil genius that is Nosferatiel - It's testing.

It seems I'm becoming more infamous by the minute. 3

@Nosferatiel



A slight digression from the thread - How the blazes did you get a custom avatar?



@Dalwin

How about this for a poll?



Ideas to change the Hero Skill Tree

Option 1 - Stick with what we've got - it's working for me

Option 2 - A paired ability with either the specialist skill or a simple boost to a random Hero stat to be selected

Option 3 - A randomised Hero Skill Tree for each new Hero in the market

Option 4 - Remove linear skill selection to be replaced with Tech tree style process on skills at different levels

Option 5 - A mixture of option 2 + 3 + 4

Option 6 - Non of the above. Start again - it's not working

That seems to cover all the bases from my point of view. I am sure the discussion side of it will detail concepts like untagling the overlap we have now with city skils and army skills being prerequisites for each other.