About unrecruited Champions: To recruit Champions of your faction you need to research (except for the most basic ones). Do we have the same requeriment to attack Champions of the opposing faction.

Dude kill them all or they will come back later to haunt you.  And don't worry the AI is finding plenty of champions to make it a fair fight later on.

I prefer master of magic, where heroes would offer to join like-minded kingdoms. It makes balancing the available champions considerably easier as their availability can simply be tied to technology, and not whether another faction has depleted the supply through purchase or murder.

Alternatively they should be harder to kill (no more non-casting mages please) and impose a diplomatic penalty.

Again, MoM's system was simple, elegant, and it worked perfectly: as you became more powerful and famous, heroes started showing at your door to offer their services.

As it's been said elsewhere, heroes standing there with a lock on their heads is certainly not the way to go, for all the reasons discussed (though locks add colour to the map!!!). Something different is needed. Quests would work, but I wouldn't want ALL heroes to come from quests. A mixed system, maybe?

If Champions are to remain on the map, then i would rather they were an active rather than passive component.

For example, each of the hereos had their own keeps of a sort and army. They would quest just as the players do, level up, get loot - in effect they would function like mini kingdoms/empires.

If a player comes along and is able to recruit then, great! The hero joins the players cause but the army disperses. If the player and the hero cannot come to some sort of accommodation, well we know what happens then. But in this case, the player has to defeat a decent threat not just wax some poor solitary unfortunate.

Champions could be worked further into the meat of the game as individual entities of some significance rather than just hanging around some street corner waiting for their price to be met...

Hmm, some ideas:

• If you slaughter the other side's unrecruited hero, diplomatic penalties apply. For example, Kingdom kills Empire unrecruited champion "-1 You've killed our faction's champions". In addition, the opposite could be true, other Kingdoms might like it so +1 or w/e.
• Introduce early game defenses/bonuses to unrecruited champions so slaughter doesn't happen until closer to midgame - gives factions early game the chance to recruit. Maybe raise the hero level so that is recruited later and has the power to fight off early game attempts on his/her life.
• Treat heros like a lair - maybe champion minions travel out and attack opposing faction.

Yeah the imbue thing is a little unclear. Is there some kind of a trade off or is it just a mandatory 25 mana click on every champion?

If there is no trade off except losing 25 mana, it should be removed and they should be able to cast their spells independently.

In fact, innate magical powers should be separated from the more powerful global scale magic associated with shards which should be reserved for Channelers only. Shards would also make the 'mundane' magic of Sovereigns more powerful than the Champions'.

Isn't this how it was in WOM? I remember the cutscene you used to get when you killed a neutral champion. I did it anway 

I really want to write an overall impression fo the game but just haven't had the time.  THIS is one of the biggest problems I have.  Our champions are pretty-much god-like, but the enemy champions are cannon fodder.  I have yet to be on the receiving end of a mass effect damage spell, and most just rush forward into melee. 

I don't know if any of you guys play Heroes of Might and Magic, but the latest one that I have (V--haven't purchased VI yet), the last thing you want to see on the battlefield is one of the opposting champions.  They are extremely good at collecting rare items and buffs, and they *know how to use them*.  More times than I can remember I'll enter into a battle with tons of elite troops and get my rearend handed to me by a moderate opposing army that has a champion with some incredible buffs.  Worst part?  You WILL NOT walk through the map very easily.  If you're facing 4 factions, you can bet all 4 of them will be just as tough.  It's very common to go after one faction's main city and hero, and at the end of the battle all you have (out of maybe 70 troops) is a single survivor (maybe two).  So... you've got to run back, regroup, and hope that none of the other champions happen to walk into your area.  I LOVE this becasue you absolutely have not won the game until it is won.  Period.

In FE and EWOM, once you get your champions to a certain level you might as well quit.  You're unstoppable, and the entertainment value is completely gone.

Also mostly agree. Personally favoring the Heroes from Quests approach (making their significance to the game and the story told in it even more personal).
(A quest for each hero would remove a double-layer mechanics at the same tech where 1 layer would be enough. Might even save resources for memory ect and increase the number of possible quest-spots on the map. Heroes are often found in inns aren't they? :P)

If the MoM-System could also be implemented I would sure be all for it...

Otherwise giving heroes of opposing factions an army (appropriate to their level) for defense sure would be an option (sounds a bit complicated to implement.)

Or just make all of them hire-able for all factions (also makes the whole thing more simple and elegant while axing a tagged-on feature which doesn't play very fun... Heroes are hard enough to hire as is and mostly random which levels you get even from your starting spot...)

All 3/4 options sound reasonable and more fun than the current form of implementation with me clearly favoring the first option (simplicity + gameplay gain seems the hugest there, also seems like one of the more simple options to implement. :))

Yup--I don't get the whole "this hero is aligned with the empire", etc.  They just sit there like a knot on a log.  Heck--if nothing else, make them available but more expensive to hire if they're aligned with the other side.  Allow us to bribe them.  Give them the ability to choose... "I will come work for you if you will give me 500 gold and the chainmail of lightning you are wearing".  Or whatever.

They have to be one side or the other if they have Death or Life magic. 

I think it would be better if all champions came from quests. The only problem there is that you have to write a fun quest for each champion, and that's not small potatoes labor wise.

You should not be able to get close to Legendary weapons just by killing an unsupported champion with hardly any hitpoints and no spells.  Agreed it is fun, but reward is way higher than the minimal risk you take attacking (and defeating) the opposing hero.  I think it would be better if they started a mini-faction, since normally the only way they can be killed is by defeating the entire faction they are on, and you could argue that they should not be able to be killed in a very easy fight before they even join a faction.

Lord Xia--perhaps that could be one of the penalties?  If you are a life magic faction, then any death magic they have will not be available since you hold no death shards.  You'd have to level them up and choose another path, or make them strictly a warrior. 

I like the idea of hiring champions from a city or tavern, the way HOMM does it - and as quest rewards would be great too.  And in HOMM, you can also rescue heroes from prisons - maybe in FE a hero could have been captured and you have to beat a powerful entourage - and this would require other balancing to make sure that 1. the guardians are tough (can't be wiped out easily), and 2. the hero reward is worth it.  Maybe the monsters could also be paid off with a high amount of any collectable resource, like gildar, diplomatic capital or even mana, and/or finely tuned diplomacy skills (obtained from diplomacy techs in the Magic tree)?  Although it probably would be better if the monsters don't also join you - getting the hero *and* the monsters would be a bit much.

This also relates a bit to Heavenfall's implementation of Dungeons in WoM, however there could be a specific quest for a specific hero in a specific, customized Dungeon that has some RPG elements - stat-based choices, resource-based choices, tech-based choices.  And because it's a dungeon, you could definitely have monsters allowing your hero to go free if you have the right stats, champions, traits, spells, resources or techs and them just disappearing into a tunnel (which they then collapse conveniently behind them ;-)) and so you don't get the monsters as well.  (Having the monsters on the adventure map would cause a problem as where do they go if you convince them to free the hero?  If you defeat them they would disappear, but paying them off or convincing them to leave would pose a problem.)