This is a very quick suggestion based on my observation that it seems a bit strange that the only possible way of acquiring new heroes in this game is a mercenary market.



Motivation: Issues with the current system

1.) It means pretty much everyone *must* research mercenary market even if they would otherwise have no interest in buying/selling mercenaries. (I can't imagine many people complete the game with just 1 hero the whole time, though I realize some factions might get a second one at some point in their faction quest line) Mandatory technologies reduce the interest of the research-choosing puzzle.

2.) It means everyone *must* put significant effort into gathering dust in order to buy heroes even if they would otherwise be focusing on production, food, science, or influence. Dust is already kinda the best resource...does it really need a monopoly here?

3.) Lore-wise it doesn't make much sense that you would hire heroes of your own faction from a mercenary market - that should be the place to go looking for ringers, cross-faction heroes with specials you covet, or even unaffiliated heroes.

4.) Does anyone ever sell a hero to the mercenary market?!? I can't imagine wanting to. So how do all those heroes get to be hanging out there?!? Doesn't seem like cultists or necro-drones would commonly work as mercenaries...

5.) Heroes from your own faction might just randomly be completely unavailable to you if they don't spawn in the market, making it hard for those who might want to play a "pure" faction.



My original proposal aims to make the mercenary market much more dynamic with the empires controlling which heroes go there:

Proposed System #1:

* 1.) Hero(s) arise in each empire at intervals. The frequency could be pre-determined or could relate to some aspect of your empire.

* 2.) When they arise that empire can spend influence to "reserve" or secure the option of building that hero with production points like a unit or release them to the mercenary market. When releasing a hero to the market, the empire gains some dust (the hero either forfeits their local holdings or pays a tax when leaving the empire).

* 3.) Overall cost is roughly the same as if you purchased the hero; it is just payed in Influence and Production rather than Dust.

* 4.) The mercenary market also contains random heroes from factions not being played in the current game as well as minor-faction heroes (once implemented).

* 4.) If a "reserved" hero is not built by a city in your empire within a certain time period (say, 20 turns) they go to the mercenary market anyway. This way, you don't end up with the option to build a ton of different heroes, and you won't be inclined to pay influence to "reserve" heroes unless you actually plan on building them soon (and can afford the production cost).

* 5.) Different factions could have unique ways of interacting with this process either right from the start or once they research certain techs (again to make the tech-choice decisions more interesting). Go wild!

-- Maybe Cultist heroes always send a tithe back to the Queen when hired by another faction (likely often, since they are awesome governors).

-- Maybe Necro heroes require a food/population sacrifice instead of influence to reserve them.

-- Maybe Roving Clan heroes have no real loyalty and go directly to the marketplace.

-- Maybe the Ardent Mages use Research Points to produce heroes instead of production. The "reserved" hero could appear in the tech screen as a special research project (one that goes away after completion and doesn't increase the cost of future techs) instead of in the city build menu as a special unit.

Yet another cool way to potentially differentiate factions!



Notes on System #1:

* Remember once you reserve a hero, you still have to build/buy them, at a price comparable to what you would pay in dust at the market. Except that you don't need to pay it specifically in dust.

* In order for the market to be populated, more heroes should emerge than most empires will want to/be able to reserve and build. The balance should be such that it takes *serious* influence to keep *all* your heroes out of the marketplace. In the early game you should have to manage your influence and choose carefully between empire policies you want on turn 20 or getting a early second hero.

* The influence cost of "reserving" an emerging hero should scale with both the stage of the game you are in and how many heroes you have already.

* It would be a good idea to pick a couple under-powered/unpopular technologies, say one from each Age, and have them also cause an extra hero to emerge in your empire when you research them. You could reserve the extra hero and build her or just let her go for the dust like any other emerging hero.

* Racial traits that give you an incentive to send heroes to the mercenary market (and even potentially hope someone hires them) would be especially fun. Having a small dust windfall associated with deciding not to reserve a new hero is nice, but having some factions get other kinds of bonuses when they release a hero or when a hero they've released is hired by another faction would help to push reserving an emerging hero from "easy obvious decision" to "hard strategic decision".

* A change like this would reduce the power of Roving Clans, since they control the market and profit whenever its used - and right now everyone needs the market to get new heroes and spends big bucks there to get them. It'd be nice to give them something in return for this loss of prominence, when other factions become potentially self-sufficient in regard to recruiting the heroes they need...I'm just not sure what would be appropriate compensation.



Alternate Ideas:



System Idea #2 (thanks to fragfish!):

* Keep mercenary market as is, but create a new building called "Champion's Proving Ground" (or similar) which is unlocked by an Age-1 techs that no one currently takes (e.g. the defensive structures one?). It can be built once per empire and enables the production of "Grand Tournament" in the production queue of that city, which lets you produce a hero for a certain cost in Food, Production, and Influence.

* The name of the building and the name/cost of the project to generate the hero could potentially vary from faction to faction.

* I really like this idea! It's simple, lets you use something other than dust to get heroes, and adds interest to the tech-choosing puzzle.



System Idea #3:

* Keep Mercenary Market as is, but have a new hero of your faction emerge each time you advance to a new age, who can then be acquired with a non-dust resource. Extremely simple way to alleviate hero-starvation in the empire that never researches Mercenary Market.

* Like Idea #2 this could be unlocked by an Age-1 techs that no one currently takes (e.g. the "better ruins exploration" one?). Then it could be combined with Idea #2 and you'd have a choice of *three* Age-1 techs that grant access to heroes, which starts to feel like an interesting choice. Which one do you take? Do you take more than one instead of the other "must-have" Age-1 techs to try and get even more heroes?



System Idea #4:

* Instead of asking for production/influence/etc, another idea would be to have an emerging hero give a quest (from a large random pool of quests, similar to how minor faction pacification works); each faction could have some unique quests, and some could also be common. Or each individual hero could have a personal unique quest.

* This would take a bit more work (making all those new quests!) to implement and be quite hard to balance though. The pacification quests can just randomly be super easy or next-to impossible depending on which one you get and what your situation is - and you wouldn't want getting heroes to be like that.





Thoughts?

I like that you get a Hero as part of the quest of the Necrophages. I tought every race got a second hero like this?

I mean heroes are supposed to be special but I don't like just buying them either, it would be cool if we could have

a super unit like someone suggested. Like an ubber Hero to bring a lot of mayhem lol



I don't like the idea of multiple heroes, more than 3 would be really annoying, they should remain a special unit.

but geting a second one trough quests is fair. A super unit would be nice too

AFAIK, Broken Lords also get a quest hero, but (spoilers) he dies a few quest stages afterwards. I have never played Roving Clans, Vaulters or Wind Walkers so I can't say about them.



However, largely I agree. All heroes being mercenaries seems very strange. I like your system, and was thinking something similar but simpler: heroes show up in the Hero screen, much like in the market, and then can be bought for increasing amounts of influence. I do like your idea though.



Also I like the tithe idea for your Cultist heroes, though I feel the mechanic would be more appropriate (with some changed fluff) for Roving Clans heroes, as travelling mercenaries seem to be their shtick.

Kuroneko wrote:
I don't like the idea of multiple heroes, more than 3 would be really annoying, they should remain a special unit.

I agree 100% that heroes should be special, valuable, expensive units!

I actually don't want to change the overall cost of heroes; right now, you research Mercenary Market, and then just save dust to buy as many as you want. I've had games with only 3-4 heroes at the end, and others where I got a governor for every city and my academy was overflowing with them. They're kinda expensive, which is as it should be. I'm just saying we need some other, different but equally expensive way of getting heroes. Because not everyone cares about mercenaries, and not everyone even wants to do their faction quest (and even 2 heroes is not enough for the entire game if you don't research Mercenary Market). I think production is the natural way to pay the bulk of the cost, since not every faction produces the tons of influence it would take to buy heroes outright using only influence. But pretty much every faction is either into production or dust at some point (gotta get structures and units somehow); those who like hoarding dust can already use the market, so adding a option that requires actual production seems natural. The only other main resources it could key off of are food or research...hmm...using research would be a cool special faction trait actually.



Note: Edited the OP for clarity, added an idea for Ardent Mages using research points instead of production.

Ladygolem wrote:
[...] I like the tithe idea for your Cultist heroes, though I feel the mechanic would be more appropriate (with some changed fluff) for Roving Clans heroes, as travelling mercenaries seem to be their shtick.

I figured Cultists would be very loyal/fanatic so wouldn't work as mercenaries unless it was benefiting the Cult in some way. For the Roving Clans they are totally all about mercenaries, but I don't see them being keen on the idea of every Clan mercenary sending a big chunk of their pay back to the central Clan government.=P Although actually their "Cuts Both Ways" ability already gives them a transaction fee whenever anyone buys anything on the market, including heroes! They struck me as more the type to work as mercenaries to keep what they earn for themselves - thus the idea that they might opt out of this new system entirely, since for them "everybody is a mercenary, everybody uses the market" makes sense, and they have the tech for it from turn 1.

OK I think we need a system to separate GOVERNORS from heroes. So we can have Governors for our towns at a cost and

get heroes from quests as part of the storyline. Doesn't make sense to have a hero bought, but then again we would need

a system to have a hero from another faction?



Maybe we should get ONE unique hero for every faction that nobody else can have. Then a couple of heroes that anyone

can buy in the market and then a QUEST hero unique to the faction for every faction. So we get 2 unique heroes and

a couple of heroes for the market and make governors only be the guys from the market.



What you guys think? It's fair, makes heroes unique and keeps the current system in place

Kuroneko wrote:
OK I think we need a system to separate GOVERNORS from heroes. [...]

That's an interesting idea to be sure, but actually a really big change for Endless Legend, and outside the scope of what I was imagining. Whether to assign/skill your one starting hero as a governor or as an army-leader is currently a really nice element of the early game strategy - but separating the roles would no-doubt lead to other interesting strategic choices. You should write your idea up in detail and give it its own thread!

On the note of making heroes more interesting I propose more hero professions to be added. Right now we have General and Governor positions available. What about assigning your hero as a Spy or a Diplomat? Would need an espionage system developed though and diplomacy expanded. This would naturally be expansion content of course.



Spies could reveal part of enemy territory, steal science and/or dust, assassinate enemy heroes, sabotage production/building etc.



Diplomat would be assigned to enemy empire. Bonuses would involve increased influence cost for hostile policies between two factions, reduced cost for positive ones/trades and some other bonuses depending on hero skills.

Thematically it would be cool to get more heroes besides hiring them as mercenaries.

Other that that it would be nice to be able to use something else rather than dust to get hold of more heroes.

But I'm still not sure it's a problem. Enabling another resource like production to be used for heroes would diminish the value of gold somewhat. Not sure what the consequences would be.

This is also something high up my wishlist, for exactly the same reason: It is just weird that you have to research mercenary market and gather Dust if you want more heroes, even if you're not otherwise going for a "I'll just buy everything with Dust"-strategy. I usually find myself having upwards of five heroes around the mid-point of my games, and the exact number simply depends on how much Dust I had. Add to this that trying to play a "pure" faction (with only your own heroes) can be quite hard if there happen to be none of them on the market.



I think some other means of procuring heroes would be ok, and Dust is already a very very powerful resource, so it certainly won't get diminished too much. There is already an arena of champions (or somesuch) building, why not make a similar "once per empire" building that enables something like "grand tournament" in the production queue, allowing you to produce a hero for a certain cost in influence, food and production?

Kuroneko wrote:
OK I think we need a system to separate GOVERNORS from heroes.

New buildings for Hero and Governors, an Military Academy and The University, throw in additional schools, School of Business unlocks Industrial pluses, School of medicines, - agurculture, and the way of the spear (inf), discipline of flow (cav), etc, Some fractions will need non-human type building paths - the Cults and Neco-



This would be able to add spies and diplomats too with the correct schools

wdknee88 wrote:
Some fractions will need non-human type building paths - the Cults and Neco-

Like Culinary School specializing in "How to prepare your enemy for dinner"

fragfish wrote:
This is also something high up my wishlist, for exactly the same reason: It is just weird that you have to research mercenary market and gather Dust if you want more heroes, even if you're not otherwise going for a "I'll just buy everything with Dust"-strategy. I usually find myself having upwards of five heroes around the mid-point of my games, and the exact number simply depends on how much Dust I had. Add to this that trying to play a "pure" faction (with only your own heroes) can be quite hard if there happen to be none of them on the market.



I think some other means of procuring heroes would be ok, and Dust is already a very very powerful resource, so it certainly won't get diminished too much. There is already an arena of champions (or somesuch) building, why not make a similar "once per empire" building that enables something like "grand tournament" in the production queue, allowing you to produce a hero for a certain cost in influence, food and production?

Yeah, farming dust will certainly not suffer much as a strategy just from no longer being the one-and-only path to get heroes!



I really like the idea of having a special building that helps with or gates the production of heroes. If that building were attached to one of the currently underused Age-1 techs it would be even better!



I've updated the OP to include your idea and give you credit for it.