Heroes...overpowered?

[Seravy]

After watching these two videos, I believe there is no doubt, what I was worried about all the time is true, heroes are overpowered.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jA-yaU6H9Mg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHiUwv6z7_I

If you don't feel like watching them, it shows two wins on IMPOSSIBLE, using pretty much only heroes in stacks of ONE owning everything on the map from start to finish.
I think I need advice here, I identified quite a lot of problems but I lack good ideas on how to fix them - powerful heroes is part of the design so any nerfing has to make sure heroes still feel amazing and perform well...but they really should not be able to win games on their own like that, and not just in the early game but later, too. If a stack of 4-6 strong heroes cannot be stopped in the late game, aside from by a similar amount of very rare creatures, that's fine. 1 hero eliminating an entire empire is not.


The problems I see are :

Small
-Heroes are far too good scouts. Most normal units have 1 range of vision, some have 2, exceptional units might have 3 or 4. Yet every single hero has at least 3. This one is easy to fix, by reducing all heroes (except actual scouting role heroes) to 2.
-Heroism is a way too powerful buff for its cost and rarity on an actual hero, despite being fair on a normal unit. Since fortunately the bonus is something the hero will naturally gain and then lose the enchantment benefits, we can probably get away with keeping this unchanged.
-Having access to Create Artifact right at the start of the game allows you to create endgame tier heroes in the first 60 or so turns. Which, as the video demonstrated are...pretty powerful. Since this is only a problem for this specific build, I think we can ignore this altogether, as no one forces anyone to play an archmage mana focusing artificier tactician wizard with those specific 6 books.
-Flight and Wraith Form are probably underpriced on items, especially the former. A flying hero cannot be attacked in combat by a lot of things, making this almost as good as invisibility. Also easy to fix by raising costs.


Medium
-Heroes can reach high enough defense that nothing aside from very rare creatures can damage them...and even those can't KILL them unless buffed. And by KILL I mean twice because Raise Dead is a thing. Not sure what can be done with this as no specific defense bonus is overpowered on its own...but you can stack way too many, and then there is super agility...
-When heroes actually die, unless you lose the whole battle, you only lose 500 mana crystals and casting time, the cost of resurrection. Which can be enough to be a problem but often is not, especially because you can revive them anywhere you have a town at. As is, the spell is overpriced and useless for early heroes, and overpowered later. Probably would not be such a big deal if the other problems weren't present though.
-Endurance is also way too good for a common buff : on heroes having 15 armor or more, it is as good as Iron Skin BUT is common instead. If that wasn't enough, the hero also becomes faster. Fortunately this is also only a problem for the early game and unless massive artifacts are involved, most uncommon spells can still hurt and kill such a hero.
-Although armor can be penetrated, Illusion damage is easy to block, doom is rare and generally very limited in amount, and armor piercing...halves armor which doesn't do much if the unit still has enough left to take no damage after it was halved. See how the heroes take no damage from the fortress lightning. Furthermore, Invulnerability will reduce damage even if it would otherwise ignore armor making it as good as 12 shields against an armor piercing attack.
-Every spell designed to kill heroes also has a counter to prevent it from working. This was a design choice, as heroes are not fun to play if they can die to a single spell and nothing can be done against it. However, this means there are no counters to heroes if the player is smart, aside from even stronger units which...don't really exist past a certain level and equipment of the hero. I justified this by the limited availability of heroes, you can't have more then 6 at a time...but, see below why that is not working well.

Severe
-Razing allows conquest to proceed at "instant" speed, so the AI which generally acts slower has no chance to do anything : if all cities are razed, they'll get eliminated from the game by the time their forces could pose a threat to the player. Furthermore, razing eliminates all the points the AI could actually attack : if you have no cities except an unbeatable capital, you're invincible. Of course this kind of "empire" could not hope to compete in resources but...heroes don't need any.
-Heroes move at godlike speed on the overland map, and can even carry units using Wind Walking.
These two combined are enough to negate the "limited availability" which was supposed to balance heroes out : if you can't have them everywhere on the map at the same time, you might win and advance at once place but still risk losing everywhere else...but as is, heroes are so fast that they actually are almost everywhere at the same time. With 6 heroes going solo, you can eliminate 72 cities in a year.

[GermanJoey]

I agree with every single one of your points. I'm also of the opinion that:

1.) Lair/Dungeon/Etc rewards are too high across the board. Because certain unit types can counter certain neutrals in a sorta rock-paper-scissors manner (for example, sprites vs great wyrms or any ranged attack vs earth elementals in nature nodes), you can get access to huge rewards very early and then use those to fuel super-powered heroes, both in terms of very high quality items but also in huge gold/mana rewards that allow you to funnel mana and skill into unit enchantments.

In one recent game, for example, I encountered a node guarded by 6 great wyrms and a single gorgon. I summoned up a stack of sprites, turned off enemy movement animations, and sent them in; web let me kill the gorgon with just a few losses in the first battle, and then I was able to take the wyrms out one fight at a time over the next 6 turns. My reward? A retort of alchemy, a nature book (to add to my 7 starting nature books), a staff with +6 def, +4 movement, +20 spell skill and 1x of freaking HIGH PRAYER, plus a ton of gold and mana. The year was freaking 1405. I ended up quitting that game a little while later because I felt there was no point in playing it out. It's not a problem with sprites... had I been another realm, I woulda suicided a couple full stacks of adamant hammerhands (or maybe halbers) to win that fight, because that reward woulda still been a huge, huge profit. This is an extreme example; in other cases, it might be about plinking down zombies one at a time with a low-leveled hero's crappy ranged attack. A boost of a few hundred mana and gold in the very early game can help you afford some enchantments, some extra casting skill, a couple buildings, etc, and the snowball starts to grow. It can eventually drown out whatever else you're doing with your empire.

2.) Related to the above, the top-tier items that you can get for clearing out some of the high end nodes can be insane. Some off the top of my head: that High Prayer staff, an axe with +3 to hit, haste, elemental armor, and resist magic, a bow with +6 attack, +3 to hit, teleporting, and IIRC +2 defense? Items with 2 or 3 out of the following: teleporting/merging, regeneration, lionheart, invulnerability, invisibility, elemental armor, haste, and flight. Stacking up 3 items like this is what turns a single heroes into win-buttons, and they're just too easy to get.

3.) Going back to the movement issue, the extremely high movement of heroes ends up devaluing other types of units. For example, many high end summoned creatures have a movement of 3, as do many top-tier normal units (while some have a movement of 2!). That means that not only can later-game heroes kite them almost effortlessly in battle, but that its a pain to keep them grouped with your main offensive stack. I only mention this because I think it ends up discouraging unit variety.

[GermanJoey]

A random thought... would it be possible to conditionally increase the cost of overland unit enchantments if the target is a hero? E.g. if Holy Weapon cost 50 mana/skill when cast on an ordinary unit, but 75 mana/skill if cost on a hero. A simple trick like that would do a lot to balance both heroes *and* unit enchantments.

[Nelphine]

Overland movement is still one of the biggest problems. As previously mentioned, I'd limit armour/misc items to +1 movement (create artifact only), at the cost of the current most expensive movement bonus. I'd limit weapons to +2 movement (2 is artifact, 1 is enchant item) at similarly high costs.

I'd also make heroes a base speed of 3.

This still allows heroes to be faster than doombats but its a big investment, and its not much faster.

You can probably do similar with defense bonuses on items. High attack is fine, but defenses and movement break the game in many ways.

Make raise dead and resurrection scale based on hero experience. Overland 100 +5 mana per experience point, in combat 50 +1 mana per 5 experience points. Resurrection then might be more expensive than even a demon lord on a strong enough hero, and raise dead would take most of your casting skill.

Windwalking is currently the ultimate spell for winning impossible. Jaer plus 3 items that solely boost movement is literally the best investment you can go for regardless of your strategy (far better than any very rare in the game, and its much earlier) with the exception of actually playing sorcery and getting 6 such heroes and also abusing magic immunity and high defenses on said heroes.

[GermanJoey]

I'd also make heroes a base speed of 3.

Ah, I was going to make this exact same suggestion, but then forgot about it while writing my post! I knew there was something else I wanted to say, but just couldn't put my finger on it.

Agree with your other points too.

[Seravy]

Resurrection and Raise Dead pay costs on spell announcement but select targets on resolution to speak in MtG terms. The target is unknown when paying for it so it cannot scale.

I'd limit armour/misc items to +1 movement

This would break the Quick Casting functionality.

I'd also make heroes a base speed of 3.

This too.
I suppose we can alter the cost to 2 movement points per spell if needed but it still breaks it if items are +1 only. Or we can leave the Illusionist at move 4 specifically.

You can probably do similar with defense bonuses on items.

I considered that but it would not help.
Heroes get :
+5 defense from Iron Skin
+2 Defense from Holy Armor
Up to +9 defense from Agility, +13 if super
+4 Defense from levels
+1 To Defend from Endurance
+1 To Defend from Prayer
+1 To Defend from Lucky
Up to +3 To Defend from Soul Linker if Chaos Channeled
4-8 from starting defense
+3 from Chaos Channel if that effect is picked

That's already in the 30s with possible up to +6 To Defend without equipment.

I feel the solution to movement would be to separate overland and combat movement somehow in items, and for defense...no idea, aside from actually changing how the defense mechanic works above ~15.

[Nelphine]

I wouldn't object to making an exception for quick casting for movement, but given that's only one hero I don't think we should let that stop the overall effect - overland movement is simply too strong. Even if we have to do a few iterations to get quick casting working correctly.

Can you add in an effect on resurrect and raise dead that after its cast, it spends additional mana based on target being hero with experience (I'm assuming drain power uses something like that, although it adds mana instead of costing more)? I think scaling would really help it, but if you can't... Hmm... Don't allow raise dead in combat, and make resurrection 1500 base cost. Sure it sucjs for new heroes, but new heroes its almost easier to just hire a new one anyway.

Super agility - why not just drop agility base bonus in half? I'm not sure I ever understood why it needed to be one per level to start. If that hurts certain heroes that default to agility too much, add 1-3 base defense to them.

Make iron skin not allowed on heroes. (Nature is about summons anyway, not heroes.)

Between agility and iron skin that's easily the biggest offenders, and I suspect by itself that would be enough.

[Seravy]

Summary of the current state.

Already decided or done :
Heroes go down to 2 Scouting.
Wraith Form goes up to 3 books in items.
Phantasmal goes up to 5 books.
Invulnerability goes up to 5 books and 1000 mana.
Teleportation goes down to 4 books. (it really isn't all that much better than having a lot of movement items)
Flight goes up to 3 books and 450 mana.
Invisibility goes up to 6 books and 900 mana.
Artificier will start with only Enchant Item for free. Create Artifact will need to be researched. Maybe make it appear in the first slot of the research list instead?


Not going to change :
Heroism
Raise Dead (existing nerf is enough)

Ideas I don't like and want to avoid doing :
Disallow razing
Razing takes extra turns to execute, army cannot move during this time
Massive global reduction of item movement (illusionist hero and too few options remaining on some item types for some realms)
Halving Agility (too drastic)
Removing True Sight or nerfing Illusion Immunity (would overpower Sorcery even more)

Raising cost of Resurrection any further (already overpriced for most parts of the game, and fortunately the AI has at least one acceptable solution : It's already on the Spell Blast list.)
Reducing the amount of lairs to lower treasure (nodes are hardcoded to 30 and are generally the main source of treasure, reducing the rest is not solving anything)
Costs changing based on target (impossible, target is not known when casting)
Making Iron Skin non-hero (no such targeting type available)

Possible solutions I'm not sure about :
1.Razing generates a global hidden, severe diplomatic penalty, enough to trigger additional wars if done repeatedly. -razing tactics are generally used when not enough forces are available to expand, defending against third parties in this situation is difficult
-however if the player has no/small empire to defend, this doesn't affect them at all, see videos. A single good hero in the capital is enough to not lose.
2. Separate combat and overland movement from items. Have items grant bonus to combat only.
3. Separate combat and overland movement from items. Have items grant halved amount on the overland map.
4. Separate combat and overland movement on items by making them into two separate abilities. This seems extremely difficult to do unfortunately.
-these probably work but they break an existing global rule "units have the same movement speed in combat and overland"
5. Have all heroes start at 3 movement except Illusionist, Thief, Assassin who get 4. (heroes would require a movement item to be able to follow paladins or other cavalry type units - despite sitting on a horse themselves)
6. Raising the cost of Endurance or making it uncommon
- Effect is not worth that much on any early game unit aside from heroes...or any non-hero unit period. It requires  5 armor on the unit to be merely equal to a Holy Armor, and only starts becoming an issue around 12. Bonuses To Defend are already capped to only affect up to 15 armor so it "only" is as good as an Iron Skin even in late game...and much worse earlier.
7. Reducing the treasure point per monster point ratio in general
8. Reducing the boost to monster strength on higher difficulties (not sure but I think the current amount is +50% per difficulty level? Need to check.)
-This escalates treasure amount equally : It's not uncommon to find 10 extra picks worth of stuff on an impossible game which is crazy....and then there are the artifacts.
9. The boosted monster amount for higher difficulties do not come with equally boosted treasure (a mix of the above two)
10. Limit the amount of extra defense in accessories to 4 like the original game
11. Make Agility +2/3 defense per level
-The amount lost through these isn't enough to affect the game much if at all. Invulnerability and Invisibility are easily worth 6 defense each on their own plus the hero can reach 30+ anyway, 40+ if agility...

[Nelphine]

Why would you say halving agility is too drastic? I'm OK with you saying it, but say, someone starts with 8 defense, and has super agility, and is level 4, they now have 14 defense. Why does it need to go up that fast?

Is it because that same 8 defense with level 1 and normal agility isn't good enough? Then change the base to 10 not 8. Its always been the higher level heroes that are a priblem, not the low level ones. When is 1 defense ever comparable to 1 melee attack (might)?

I would think armor going up half as fast as melee attack would be balanced, but you seem to disagree. I've thought that since insecticide before even looking at CoM, but I've never heard reasoning as to why people think agility should be +1/level.

On a similar note, even though overland movement is the main problem, why is speed 12+ combat something you actually think is good for the game? Not saying it can't be, but you've already decided to reduce teleport because its not enough better than highbcombat movement.. I think teleport should be increased in cost, not reduced, especially for a human player.. Which means that high combat speed is probably too powerful too, even if it's nor as bad as overland. I'd like to hear your reasoning against this, especially given the reasons for starting this thread. On a side note.. Reducing max movement speed would do nothing to change how many abilities an item would have, so I'm not sure I understand your comment about not enough abilities. (Given how strong we agree movement is, the fact you can even get +1 is still good, which uses up just as many slots as +4 movement.) Realistically, except against very particular spells (merging/cracks call come to mind) 10+ combat speed is probably better than flight - which you're already increasing for being too strong.

[Seravy]

Why would you say halving agility is too drastic?

At level 4 they get only +2 from a halved agility. At level 6, only +3. Level 8-9 would be a max of +4 but that is hard to reach.
While defense is a good stat, +2 (or 3) is not worth an ability slot when the other options are, +2 to hit, +4 to 6 attack strength, immunity to status, +1 hit and defend, etc. It will compare very poorly to anything else, I rather have a hero with might or blademaster and put defense into the item slot where I'd otherwise have more attack or hit.
On the other hand, losing that 4 defense is not going to solve the problem. (unless we nerf everything and that's very bad design)
Super agility is a different story but that one is rare so the decision needs to be based on the normal version.

I would think armor going up half as fast as melee attack would be balanced

Normal levels on heroes actually follow this rule, you only get 1 armor every 2 levels.
The problem is, abilities are not free, they take a slot. And while +9 defense is much better than +9 attack, +4 defense is so much worse (compared to any other ability as well, not just might!) that you'd never want to see agility on a hero again.

While this design is doable I see a problem with it which is this :
Attack is already twice as good as defense in general. A hero typically has + To Hit much more than + To Defend, and To Hit is uncapped while + Defense is not.
So 1 attack will result in more damage output than 1 defense results in reduction in the typical scenario, as long as it's about heroes. (but we can say it's also true for summons, as higher level summons usually have +2 or +3 To Hit)
The only thing not following this is normal units, better ones don't necessarily have more Hit, but those aren't meant to be able to hurt a high level hero anyway. (which is why fast heroes+razing is a problem, as most enemy cities will be guarded by normal units)

why is speed 12+ combat something you actually think is good for the game?

I don't. I think it is irrelevant. Armies start at a distance of 6 from each other. Any movement above 6 does nothing meaningful in combat, aside from countering another unit that has the same amount and weaker melee stats. At best you want 7 to reach the back row as well and outrun doom bats. This much can be reached by a single movement bonus item (depending on the hero and desired amount, you need 1,2 or 3, not even the max of 4).
Furthermore there are three item powers that allow this kind of movement : Teleportation, Merging, and Haste.So aside from it being irrelevant, there are also a ton of sources for it so changing only one is meaningless.
By definition, Teleport and Merging are infinite movement, so removing them would be the only option, you can't reduce them.

So yeah, 7 or 12 movement, no difference. On the other hand if you needed 3 slots on items to reach that 7 then why would you bother? Not worth it. Equip one teleport/merge/haste item instead, takes fewer slots and grants a better benefit.

Reducing max movement speed would do nothing to change how many abilities an item would have, so I'm not sure I understand your comment about not enough abilities

I prefer to eliminate it complete from certain item types. For example Plate Mail. Which would leave you with these options if playing Death :
6 Armor (obviously)
2 Resistance (poor choice and many heroes don't need resistance)
2 Movement would be gone
20 Casting skill (most casters don't wear a plate mail)
Wraith Form (you probably want this one)
Clock of Fear (and usually not this)

...of course Death isn't really meant to be good at making items, but not being able to pick at least 4 things that do something (assume your hero is charmed and not caster) is sad.

...okay, let's say I see your point...if I wanted to to it that way it would come with some pretty heavy implications :
-Movement on pretty much every item type would need to go down to 0-2. My preference would be 0 on armor, 2 on accessory and 2 on specific types of weapons only.
-Teleportation and Merging and Haste are already quite expensive in mana costs, but book costs could go up.
-Quick Casting would need to be changed to cost  only 2 move per spell.

The implications would be
-Play Sorcery if you want to still have infinite movement in combat. Nature also works but Teleportation is superior (it grants 1 movement and 1 To Defend)
-Heroes will still move enough to reach the next nearest town on the map in one turn. (typical distance 4-6) Not much slowdown achieved, unless the enemy is spread across many, distant continents.
-Quick Casting nerf is not too severe overall I guess.
-Demon Lords become slightly more powerful : If buffed by Endurance they can cast 3 times
-Heroes will have a very hard time in nodes unless flying or invisible - Sorcery is essential.
-I have to check and readjust all 250 predefined items manually

Overall, this buffs Sorcery way too much in my opinion...and they're already the best at supporting heroes.

One final thought : Flight is better than 12 movement. Flight means the enemy cannot summon something in combat and hit the hero immediately. 12 movement...only avoids units already in the battle. Against neutrals movement is better ofc.

and a semi-related question : Does anything think Flaming should/should not exist? I'm not entirely sure I see the point of that ability (you get a stat you already have plenty of) in a weapon and we could use the slot for some new ability. For example something for Death wizards and armors. Not that i have any specific idea but I do thing Flaming is...kinda meaningless. (on the other hand Chaos's options for items also suck. Especially on armors.)