Make heroes mean a bit more

I agree that the heroes feel a bit generic once you've recruited them. I think it would help if heroes started with more unique abilities that are closely tied to their backstory. It would also help if the leveling system were more dependent upon a hero's original starting abilities, rather than pulling abilities at random out of a digital hat at each level-up.

Particularly the highest level champions that require much research to recruit should come with some unique abilities, preferably tied to their backstory, that can't be acquired by just leveling a lower-level hero.

I fully support this and the above. Right now the only champion that provides any sort of attachment is my soveriegn. The others are just a collection of stats that I either got unlucky or lucky with during level up selection. I mean seriously, who here doesn't remember Mystic X, Roland, Torin or Deth Stryke. Heck even the lower tier heroes like Shin bo, Gunther or The Golden One are unique enough to remember.

Randomly selected traits is a poor idea. A selection of traits based on champion level and pre-requisites is good. Champions that have their own unique set of level up options is better! I want to be able to see the name 'Rendfult the Monk' and immediately recognize a difference between his abilities and 'Ogandar the Warmage'

I have been thinking that maybe 3 nonrandom traits and 2 random is a better balance. I like the idea that there is a unique chance to get lucky, but there should absolutely be a certain level of progression at each level. I really like it when I can remember a hero and their specialization using descriptions like Frost Wizard and Battlemage. This usually happens when I feel like I am leveling a hero towards a specific goal, something that can only be done so much in a random system. 

  That is the secret sauce!  I hope someone is listening.

Not only do I agree with your statement I'll go one step further.  I want to start a new random game and think "man I hope I get Rendfult the Monk this game".

Yeah, as much as the random traits are designed to partially avoid players' gaming the system, it actually kinda games the fun right out of the game.  I like seanw3's suggestion of having random trait pops mixed in with tiered, semi-scheduled pops.

My response, Champions start with personal quests... which follow their story line and result in rewards tailored for them, just saying.

That is actually very easy to do. I am doing something like that for a mod. 

Absolutely agree. Make the initial champions recruitable the more generic, randomly-rolled ones. The ones that unlock via research need to be more unique, with abilities/traits tied to their backstories. The higher the tech research, the more heroic and bad-ass. Also, make the champions who are holed-up waiting for a tech unlock scale to the average level of the sovereigns/champions already in play, or, level them based on an equation related to the turn number (Level=Turns/30 or something).

Torin the Chosen One I can remember. These heroes? Yeah not so much.

I literally rename my characters to 'Adminchick' 'Casterdude' 'Defenderman' etc each game so I know who is who.

The "Paths" need to be a lot more unique with unique abilities and weaknesses rather than just some stats.

My Champions fall into three categories:

• Melee Murderers
• Explosive Fire Mage of Death
• The Supporting Cast

Currently:

• You can't make a good archer champion.
• You can't make an Assassin, Warrior, or Defender really stand out from each other that much.
• My last game had 1 earth shard, 2 water shards, and an Air Shard. My Fire Mage still gets most of the mana use in Combat while the others are mainly used for handing out buffs and debuffs.

I hope to see a lot more spells in the game in general and some that really make the non-fire paths really stand out for usefulness.

I would like to see Assassins that specialize in killing other Champions and sovereigns. I would like to see Defenders that are real generals of Armies. I'd like to see Archer champions that are as frightening as their melee counterparts.

Don't forget the healer / buffer archtype.  Life Magic is tactically tepid.

Don't agree about Life magic, Growth is crazy good and Call to Arms is nice

Heal is lackluster because it scales really poorly (ironic, you'd figure life would be good at healing)

That doesn't strike me as much of an argument for Life.  Casting one spell over and over, even though it's 'good', is not 'fun.'

There's only a bare handful of spells for each school, so that issue is hardly unique to life

Life is good for boosting max health. I do think it needs a makeover though. I reMoMber when it was terrifyingly powerful. 

Growth/haste is great on archer units. But the healing is pathetic. It needs a mana cost decrease and/or a massive upgrade to the amount of health gained.

Seriously, a magical heal is equivalent to... eating salted pork in combat?

Champions do seem improved since WoM but they do need some more love. I think the best or easiest way would be to do more with traits and "classes" that they can follow or develop into. I like the random selection of traits you can pick from but sometimes you get traits that mean NOTHING or do not help that character. There certainly does need to be more done to make them all stand out from one another and unique.

Also, add voices.