Diminishing value of hero abilities

[GMBarak]

Hello,

Some of the possible heroe's abilities or vials have diminishing values as the game time increases and you get bigger economy, mana income and cities:

Noble
Sage
Legendary
AEther Master
Ritual Master


So, I would like to suggest that heroes should not get these traits after a certain year (maybe 1505?) and that there should not be possible vials from these traits,
Also I would like to suggest adding these two traits as possible vials:

1. Wind walking
2. Quick casting


Please let me know what you guys think.

Thanks!

[JustOneMoreTurn]

That sounds like a reasonable limitation. Those can be pretty powerful early, but they do get less important later. Noble could be dropper earlier than the others, since it's a fixed amount, or make it level-based.

[Suppanut]

I think noble is alright when you considered that you nolonger pay his or her upkeep, I hope that noble have upgrade that either pay half or none of mana upkeep.

[JustOneMoreTurn]

Do people generally swap their developed early heroes for new--but inexperienced--heroes later in the game? Do you swap them out for champions? I generally end my games well before that period, so I don't know. It seems that it would be difficult to train up a new hero/champion late in the game. Perhaps the system should be changed, so that you'd be expected to keep whichever heroes you acquire, and have options to improve them above what is available now. For example, Summon Champion could be changed to instead give an existing hero a champion ability.

If you cast Summon Hero later in the game, you should get one based on your Reputation (I forget if that's the term used), and maybe at a higher experience level. You can tack on an extra mana cost for a higher quality hero.

Would those sorts of changes improve gameplay?

[Seravy]

I think vials and the additional experience levels should be enough reason to keep using the old heroes, as long as they are of a type useful for your strategy.
First Strike is probably the only significant ability you can't add to a hero with an item, but only two champions and one normal hero has it's not a clear "this makes champions better" case either.
Armor Piercing can be obtained by Lightning items, Illusion through Phantasmal, or there is Doom as well for a similar purpose. Aside from these, champions are only better due to higher base stats and more hero abilities, but vials and level difference should cover for that.

Adding a limitation of no resource type vials in treasure makes sense, but the ideal place for that would be the hero ability modding file which doesn't exist yet.

[GMBarak]

Good to see you're back Seravy, everything you say makes sense in this topic and others... thank you for creating such a great game.