Why do we need Legendary ability?

[Bear]

Legendary heroes. This is general concern not the CoM specific. However CoM keeps supporting this ability.

The primary in game fame purpose, as I understand it, is an ability to attract better heroes. Other uses are minor and non strategic related (decrease in army support, final score).

From the strategic point of view the first 5 fame is the most wanted and most difficult milestone. As soon as you amassed army capable to earn fame one at a time it is just a matter of more battles to get to 10-20-40. How hero fame contribute to it? From the first impression, it seems pretty weird for hero demanding fame to even get hired and then generating it after that. I could understand it if the process acquiring fame was incredibly painful and slow and hiring some legendary low level guy (preferably 0 fame) would help you build up your attractiveness for higher heroes much faster. However, it is not the case. The earliest legendary hero the Rogue (fame 20). He doesn't contribute much to it. Since you have already got to fame 20 without his help, you'll spurt to 40 pretty quickly anyway before he even get to level 7 (3 * 7 = 21 fame) to close gap between 20 and 40. Other legendary heroes are fame 40. So their fame doesn't give you any strategical advantage at all. All it does is reduces your army support a little and contributes to final score. Which, in my opinion, should not be a property of a primary battle unit.
Would it be more strategically appropriate to remove this ability altogether? As an option is to put it on lowest level heroes (fame 0 and 5) and give them just 1-2 fame increase per level? This way it would at least contribute to your fame progress in some initial stage of the game.
Or, even better, just add amount of fame for each hero exactly equal to what the penalty when you lose hero in battle! No need for a specific relatively useless ability and the formula is automatic. This way 6 heroes would build up total of 6 * 8 / 2 = 24 fame. That is a pretty good help to get to final 40 mark but don't even exceed it. So you need to contribute some battle generated fame too. How do you like it?

[Sapher]

I'll just post how fame works in CoM beacuse i am not sure you understand

Chance for heroes to show up for a human player no longer depends on fame and is instead a preset 1/6, 1/12, 1/36, 1/48, 1/60, 1/90 chance depending on the amount of hero slots already in use. Fame is used to increase the quality of offers instead.

Also 

Increased Fame required for heroes to appear for hire. From the old tiers of 0,5,10,20,40 fame, they are changed to 0,10,20,40,100 fame.

[Bear]

I'll just post how fame works in CoM beacuse i am not sure you understand

Chance for heroes to show up for a human player no longer depends on fame and is instead a preset 1/6, 1/12, 1/36, 1/48, 1/60, 1/90 chance depending on the amount of hero slots already in use. Fame is used to increase the quality of offers instead.

Also 

Increased Fame required for heroes to appear for hire. From the old tiers of 0,5,10,20,40 fame, they are changed to 0,10,20,40,100 fame.

Thank you for clarifying, Sapher. That is the useful info. As I mentioned, this is not specifically CoM thread but generic one that is related to CoM as well since it supports hero fame requirements anyway. The thing that it stretches fame requirements to 0,10,20,40,100 is pretty good improvement by itself. However, my question still stands. Why would top level hero would need Legendary after you've already crossed the highest limit? The Legendary on 0,10,20 hero makes more sense now as it keeps contributing toward higher tier for longer.

In fact, I would appreciate anyone posting a final CoM hero list with all abilities. I tried to find them in changelog but they are pretty incomplete, partial, and scattered across. Maybe I'll stop asking stupid question after I research them better.

For example, I found this in changelog:

-When a hero appears for hire, higher fame requirement heroes have a lower chance to appear. This effect diminishes as fame increases, and ceases if fame reaches 3x the required amount.

Very interesting. However, I would like to know the exact "lower chance" mechanics, if possible.

[Sapher]

The thing that it stretches fame requirements to 0,10,20,40,100 is pretty good improvement by itself.

Because the chance for a hero to appear no longer depends on fame this stretch makes it so that you will not see a champion join you ever unless you summon him, so i dont think it was a good improvement. If your strategy relies on heroes it would be stupid to wait for 100 fame to hire a first hero.

Why would top level hero would need Legendary after you've already crossed the highest limit?

Fame is not useless after you have 100 of it, it still reduces the cost of your army by 1 gold for each point of fame. Why would you need noble skill on a top hero? or sage? or Ritual Master? or AEther Master?

[Bear]

The thing that it stretches fame requirements to 0,10,20,40,100 is pretty good improvement by itself.

Because the chance for a hero to appear no longer depends on fame this stretch makes it so that you will not see a champion join you ever unless you summon him, so i dont think it was a good improvement. If your strategy relies on heroes it would be stupid to wait for 100 fame to hire a first hero.

You think 100 is too high? I didn't make up my mind about this yet. I am at the level when my normal units take towers with few Sky Drakes. I have about 130 fame, 4 heroes but none champion. I agree that this should be about time when I get one. Or maybe even a little earlier. I need to play a little more to compose my mind.

Why would top level hero would need Legendary after you've already crossed the highest limit?

Fame is not useless after you have 100 of it, it still reduces the cost of your army by 1 gold for each point of fame. Why would you need noble skill on a top hero? or sage? or Ritual Master? or AEther Master?

I mentioned it. I meant this is small economical bonus comparing to gold income you probably have at that time. It does not add anything strategically or tactically or in term of approaching more heroes.

[Seravy]

Because the chance for a hero to appear no longer depends on fame this stretch makes it so that you will not see a champion join you ever unless you summon him, so i dont think it was a good improvement. If your strategy relies on heroes it would be stupid to wait for 100 fame to hire a first hero.

The problem there is you finish playing in 1/3 of the intended amount of time. You don't get very rare spells either most of the time for the same reason.
Having 100 or even 200 fame is normal if you don't rush and reach the actual endgame champions are intended for.
Also don't forget Colosseum adds 5 so you can reach 100 easily by owning enough cities and building it.

I agree Legendary is among the weaker hero abilities, but it's flavorful and while below average, it's still a great ability, often better than Noble and several others. 1 Fame is worth 1 gold so Heroism+Legendary is already better than it for money but fame also :
-Unlocks better heroes
-Increases your chance of getting the better heroes even beyond the unlock threshold
-Increases your chance of mercenary offers
-Increases your chance of item sale offers

It's nowhere near bad enough to spend extra effort removing. I did consider it as less value when designing heroes so it isn't making heroes weaker (unless it's a random roll but those are about luck anyway).

A list of all heroes exists as a pinned thread : http://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/showt...p?tid=8050

The game determines which hero you get by rolling one at random. If you fame is too low, it rerolls. If your fame is enough but less than 3 times the required, there is a chance of rerolll = 100-(33*Fame/FameRequired).  If no more rerolls happen the last one is what you get. If you don't have enough gold however, you get nothing and instead that hero gains a level so next time they'll be more powerful. Heroes cost quite a bit more gold than in the original so that is something to remember.
I believe the fame system is currently following the game progress well but Summon Hero might be a bit too easy to get and use which might make it feel less good in comparison.

(Fame is useful until 300 to have maximal chance of Champions appearing.)

Earliest Fame hero, the Rogue, requires 0 fame in the mod and comes with Super Legendary. That is the one hero where fame is the main selling point. On later heroes it's not that useful but it is just an "extra" on them, the heroes are good enough even without it.

[Sapher]

Having 100 or even 200 fame is normal if you don't rush and reach the actual endgame champions are intended for.

I had 250 - 300 fame in the last game near the end. The point is if you plan to use heroes you will use not only champions but also normal heroes. But that makes the chance for a new hero to appear so small that you can only summon a hero after you control at least 2. If you have 2 heroes you need to wait 3 years on average to see a new offer. And there is a huge chance that this offer will still be a usual hero. 3 years for a hero? i can conquer both planes in 3 years from having a completely peacefull game. 
So the only chance to get a champion in a game that uses heroes is to summon that champion. All those requirements of 100 fame is just a trap. That is not how you can get a champion.

[Bear]

I agree that Legendary is a good thing. Sorry about the post title. I probably should rename it. I meant it make little sense in original game setup. It makes somewhat more sense in CoM with more fame investment needed to attract a champion.

This is a mix of different game feature that is very difficult to make right. It is impossible to balance everything. Either one or another becomes pretty ridiculous one way or another.

The cornerstone of above problem is hero advancement. You are supposed to grow your heroes. You cannot lose them ever. Otherwise, the whole point of hero level advancement is unreachable and becomes not applicable strategy. You may, theoretically, replace weaker heroes with stronger ones when you feel like advancing stronger hero brings you more benefits. This may happen once or twice in a game at most. And again this is controlled by you. No accidental hero loss allowed.

These two approaches for heroes are contradictory: do not lose heroes and lose them but replace quickly. It seems that original game was incoherent in this regard. The hero advancement system favors keeping them long. Whereas relatively low fame requirements and hero summon spells suggest higher frequency of replacement. CoM corrected fame requirements to favor hero advancement. Now you don't get them too often and in progressive order. So even your low level heroes takes quite time for advancement. That matches these two game aspects. However, there are multitude of others those still in strange relations.

For start, the "never lose hero" strategy is by itself pretty restrictive. There is nothing like that for normal units advancement. You produce them in large quantities not afraid to lose some. You also can build improvement building to let them start at higher level. So definitely some of them live to be elite.

Another thing that doesn't play well with it is the short game. At some point you accumulate enough strength to conquer everybody and since then it is just a matter of walking through entire plane without anybody stopping you. I believe designer planned for different scenario with local war and slow front line advancements instead. As a result, even in original game with plenty of champions for hire I rarely could advance my champion to decent enough level before the total conquest. In CoM I rarely get the champion by this point.

Summarizing above, the hero advancement system is not perfectly fit into the game and probably never will. It is impossible to fix it completely. So the CoM does the best things possible here and there. Other than that we can just complain about flaws and imbalances but this is what it is.

[Seravy]

If you look at the two contradicting things using the "or" perspective instead of the "and" one, it looks pretty good. You can either have a high level, but low tier hero, or a lower level, but higher tier hero. The two will be equally powerful. Champions can replace your dead lower tier heroes, without being as useless as that hero would have been at level 0. Items and experience are both more available later in the game, so that new champion starts with even more benefits the hero never had. I believe this is perferctly balanced, and wanting to have the champion, at maxed level, that early, is greedy. If winning too early is an issue, raise the difficulty level, or land size. If it's STILL an issue, we need to analyze why is it possible to win too fast, and how to stop it. I've done a lot of changes in the past half year to ensure extremely fast plays are not possible, but probably there still are problems I overlooked. (One I'm aware of is the too small distance between landmasses, making it too quick to reach them and start conquering them. Unfortunately, nothing can be done to fix that - the map size is hardcoded 40*60 and can't be increased. Razing can be a possible other issue because it allows progress without having to defend the "gained" territory - it's a gamble though, if anything does slow you down, the cities you destroyed will be missing from your empire.)

[Bear]

What you say about replacing hero with new champion supports my point that is it fine to replace as long as you control it. This way you indeed chose to get relatively good replacement. However, as many others before me stated it already, this play style is impossible without constant save/reload. Otherwise, you lose heroes too quickly. They are not significantly tougher than regular units at the beginning of their career. You may easily lose all 35 of them playing iron man (no reloads). That is the contradiction: you want to preserve them for advancement but you cannot advance them by keeping them off battle. Besides, the "keeping units off battle" doesn't sound right for strategical war game.

You don't have such problem with normal units because you don't care. Yes, it may be sad to lose your elites but that's fine. You grew them to die for purpose. For heroes you don't want them to die for purpose. Seriously, advancing heroes is more of an RPG element similar to Might & Magic rather than strategical one. Heroes are themselves are central piece of your game giving you pure aesthetic pleasure observing your hero slots occupied, watching them grow, enchanting them, dressing them up like dolls. Yes, they may contribute to a fight with lesser enemies but this is aesthetic thing too: watching as one figure unit crashes enemies alone.
Anyway. Building heroes is a completely side line quest that has nothing to do with a victory. In my opinion strategical part of the game and heroes do not need to be balanced between themselves in any way. Let them both be. I believe you are on a right track with them already.

I am not proposing anything here as it is not important to me. However, if you are on a mission to integrate heroes into the war strategy more tightly, following guidelines could be in line with it.

1. Heroes should worth their price at level 1.
2. Their improvement with advancement should resemble to that of normal units. Of course, they still will be growing in value much faster but they should not do it extremely fast. For example, normal unit elite is about 2-3 times better than recruit. At the same time, fully grown hero easily improves their value 20-100 times (depending on abilities set) in original game. You nerfed it a little by increasing their initial stats which is good things. Take non combat abilities, for example. They turn combat unit into walking goodie producing factory and directly support "develop and don't let die" tendency. Still, even with your nerf, I dare to say - such skyrocketing advancement is not needed. They become absolute overkill (especially higher tiers). It kills the 4X game spirit.
3a. They should be relatively tougher than they are now just to decrease the dying chance. With that one may not afraid they will drop like flies. Give them more shields initially and with level too as they are facing stronger opponents.
3b. Another option is to let everybody resurrect them with arcane spell. You'll lose enchantments and items but not the progress. This completely eliminates fear of losing them too often.

Let me reiterate it once more. I do not want to completely eliminate the chance for hero to die for good. There are plenty irrecoverable damage in the game that even resurrection doesn't fix. Besides, you may (and probably should) make resurrection very expensive since you are bringing back already advanced hero. It will be painful to keep hero in service but you can if you want! This will make game more attracting and more smooth to the end. People won't break their monitors any more just because the hero they fostered for the week died irrecoverably and they accidentally overwrote their save.