I am saying that some of the things that I feel is important changes are ignored

Nothing wrong with feeling stuff should be modded in, but I hope for the vanilla game to be cool too.

Those 2 bandits are really useless, it doesn't take long to train 2 scout units, the problem is 2 scout units aren't worth alot in this game, since heroes will eventually get there.
And some of the other picks will give you a bonus in early game, but also give a significant bonus lategame, like armorer.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

• Maybe the Bandit Lord should come with two scouts instead.  Call him the Scoutmaster.  Would you pick it then?

• Or maybe the Bandit Lord should come with one bandit warrior and one bandit archer.  Would you pick it then?

2 free scouts from turn 1, instead of perhaps 1 after how many turns? And that instead of starting to build other things like a pioneer perhaps? With those 2 bandits scouting, starting the build with a pioneer is no gamble ever.

It should not be underestimated. Exploring the map fast means alot for planning an effective expansion, and those bandits makes exploration both free and super fast.

Better getting bandits then scouts, because thats more flexible if u want some early support troops for your sovereign. They can also be good scouts of course. 

Bandit archer would be nice of course, and could offer even more flexible support roles. On the other hand; those bandits already have throwing knifes, so it's perhaps better if they are bandits with rusty swords that combines melee fighting  and knife throwing.

Beastlord not worth much?

Really? 

Shhh

I mean it's fine as it is, it requires some planning, sacrifice and tactics to be actually useful. 

I don't like any traits the AI can't use. That puts Beastmaster on my shitlist.

984 Changelog: "Tame doesn’t have a casting time anymore, but does have a mana cost".

When I see the AI use it successfully, I will put it on my wipedlist.

I don't consider it a proper perk when I can grab items on the random loot that does the same
All I see on that pic is poor lost XP

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

I like the concept of choosing what is worth keeping and what you kill for XP. That is very much my style.

I also just realized that Noah must have been a beastmaster!  

I tried diplomat in a game yesterday.  My first fight, it was resisted and couldn't use it again.  I thought, this kind of sucks.  Next three fights, it worked, gained three units of Tarth archers.  Pretty handy.  Not bad at all.  Not super great, but it's a nice choice.

I tried bandit leader in a game last night in 0.99.  It worked pretty well, and those starting units are not completely useless.  Now, I imagine after the initial part of the game, bandit lord will be pretty useless, but thats balanced against being able to build a bandit army early on.  This is a solid zerg approach  especially with wealthy, but the bandits won't stand up to most trained units even early on.  Also, I haven't tried to use this ability on "syndicate" baddies yet, if it works on them, they could be fairly useful troops too.  It's certainly a choice now, as before it could never be used.

Here is my take, for what it may be worth:

Beastmaster can be very powerful, I once took a lvl 11 Hoarding spider with a collar, it dominated the AI by itself.

Summoner gives you an early game meatbag/damage dealer, which can be sacrificed, and resummoned, allowing early expansion with weak mage sov (only works on difficulties without HP increase of mobs though) so has some use, but I see no mid/late game advantage whatsoever (summons too wimpy, even with extra levels)

Never tried diplomat, by the time I'm able to amass 500 influence to take control of a city, I either will not be able to hold it or can take it anyway

Warlock, the other mage choice, has just so much more bang for the buck than summoner, its a no brainer

Armorsmith is my favourite choice when I go melee, huge mid/late game advantage empirewide

Warlord will only become useful when Non-hero strategy becomes viable (for me normal units seem to become useful only once my gold income is already solid, so I don't need it)

Never tried Banditlord either

Noble seems to be useless with only 1 extra fame and the 5% less unrest, would be a viable choice once I could skip a building in the queue with like 15%

General is a nice one with 25% extra army XP if I had issues leveling, but as that is going well, I prefer to beef up my powers directly. Would be a real choice if it was 25% empire wide and normal units were of any import

Hunter (50% more dm against beasts with weapons) is too specific for me (also looks to me more like a personal talent)

Adventurer, with the free champions recruiting, can be nice also late game, as the costs can be quite high (current game having one at ~1800 gold - the one with the bow with 2xlvl in lihtning dmg) so that can be a real saver of money also late game, highly situational though, as it is rare in late game for any heroes to be left at higher difficulties, so I normally give this one a pass

I think thats all

I don't think you have diplomat correct, but I agree with everything else.  The ability you are describing  I believe and might be wrong, comes with the betrayer nation ability.  With diplomat, you get the silver tongue ability that lets you convert an enemy trained unit in battle to your side.  This can be useful, and fun to get things you might not have access too, like Tarth archers or Capitar warhorse knights.  It also gives 40 influence, which is meh, and gives a 30% bonus in trades, which can be good if it works, hard to tell.  

Bandit lord is my new favorite background trait. It is very FUN. It has the potential to be very powerful, or not so much, but it depends on each game and it is FUN!!! Great job SD!

My favorite is naming the bandits. I roleplay that they are outcasts/bastards and so they all get the last name Swamps.

In my latest game I had the following bandits:

Jorry Swamps

Timory Swamps

Brothers Swamps (group of 3)

Triplets Swamps (group of 3)

Roher Swamps

etc. Then when they die, I'm a little sad. So much fun!!!!

There is an advantage to using Broken Loyalties to take a city.  It doesn't get its population halved from being conquered, so it could potentially be a lot quicker at attaining the next city level.  Just make sure you can move your army into it on the same turn you use Broken Loyalties, okay?

I think that the Summoner sovereign class would be more useful if it did at least one of the following:

1. Gave summoned units extra defense per summoner's level (not necessarily +1 defense per level, but I wouldn't object to that level of defense boosting until I had a chance to test it - +1 defense for every other level is probably more balanced, though).
2. Gave summoned units a summoner's level dependent level bonus (although even this is iffy, since all it really does is give the summoned units more health to play with, and even summons that have been running around with your sovereign from the start of the game start to feel squishy once midgame trained units or moderately strong monsters start showing up).
3. Allowed you to have multiple summoned units using the same spell by a given caster, though possibly only on the tactical map - if I could summon even one or two extra shadow wargs during combat in addition to the one that I summoned on the strategic map, Summoners would seem much more competitive when compared against the Warlock, which is the only other magic class available to any sovereign. It's also limited in use early on in the same way that damage spellcasting is limited early in the game - the lack of any significant mana reserve to draw on for your spellcasting.
4. Provided some form or another of caster level-dependent stat boost to the summoned units - for example increasing initiative, or an attack boost.
5. Cause summoned creatures to gain more than just the basic bonuses from leveling up - maybe a summoner's Fire Elemental gains additional fire damage every time the Fire Elemental gains a level, while his Ice Elemental's slowing attack causes an increasing initiative penalty with higher levels.
6. Reduces the mana cost of summoning creatures, either by decreasing the casting cost or decreasing the ongoing cost for having a summoned creature.

I think that if more than one or maybe two of the above were implemented, Summoner would probably outshine Warlock. Summoner isn't terrible in its present state, but on the other hand +2 levels for summoned units is nothing to be excited about.

Perhaps consider encouraging player-created sovereigns who take Summoner and Warlock to take more magic abilities than yo would normally take on a sovereign by decreasing the cost of (some) of the spellbooks, and possibly allowing the Summoner and Warlock classes to take an extra magic level on character creation, and perhaps also increasing the costs of the more direct combat related sovereign traits (such as might or hardy).

As for the other sovereign classes:

Bandit Lord and Beastmaster are fun, and can provide a reasonable early game army (and, with Beastlord, even a late-game army - Hoarder Spiders are scary things) if properly managed. Bandit Lord loses its luster fairly early on, though, as Bandits start becoming useless when you begin to be able to bring armored units into the mix. Only real problem is having to get into melee range of the opposing units in order to cast Tame and Convert Bandit.

I've never actually seen a use for the abilities of the Diplomat class, although it is probably quite useful to be able to steal parts of your enemy's army while in battle.

Armorsmith, Warlord, and General are all useful for the big armies of trained units. I think I'd usually take General for the faster leveling, and perhaps Armorsmith for the increased defense to help my trained units serve their purpose as meatshields for my champions. Warlord only seems like it would be useful for the very large armies in late game or if you happen to be stuck with a relatively small empire in the early to mid game, so I'd sooner take Armorsmith or General.

Adventurer seems too hit or miss to me - usually by the time I can recruit the high level champions, they don't seem worth the expense (what can I do with them that is so superior to armies of four or five rush-trained horsemen, before counting the cost of equipping the newly recruited hero?), and usually I'm either swimming in more heroes than I know what to do with or almost all the heroes that I've seen are opposite alignment. This one is thus not one I'm inclined to take unless I want to focus primarily on champions for the game (also, this hurts hero development since there is essentially a limited amount of experience to go around, and I'd rather have a few level 20 to level 30 champions than many level 5 to 15 champions - though going to war with a neighbor and farming their armies can solve this to some extent).

I'd agree with Gorshmak that Noble seems useless, but it does help slightly if you want to run with a relatively high tax rate. The extra prestige is negligible even in the early game - my first city already grows faster than I can usually provide food for it (at least until I found the second town) and adding one prestige doesn't help with that, while later on that one prestige is not much compared to any prestige gained from sovereign levels, research, and any other prestige boosters you come across, and moreover is split over all the cities you have. Not a very good ability, also not a terrible one, but there isn't much benefit from having a high city growth in this game, and the one prestige isn't going to significantly increase growth anyways.

Hunter is alright for a combat-oriented hero, not much good for a magic-oriented hero (unless you want the extra help in the early game). Seems like an early-game class, and nothing special for later on when most of the monsters are gone. Mid- to late-game, I don't think this really provides any bonus, since you should be focusing on fighting other players at that point rather than the local wildlife. Early- to mid-game, this could be quite nice, since you get more additional damage from this than from most other starting abilities. On the other hand, you could get much the same effect by taking the Might trait (+3 attack) and the Cruel weakness (+1 attack, +50% to hero recruitment costs) and take a better or more interesting sovereign class.

Edit: Corrected an error where I mistakenly attributed the "Broken Loyalties" ability to the Diplomat class. Thanks to Lord Xia and Kongdej for bringing this to my attention.

Broken loyalties does NOT come from diplomat.  It comes from the betrayers faction ability.

What he said.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Also, you don't get the units inside the city when you take over a city with Broken Loyalties - any trained units or heroes in the city get kicked out.  So the main use for it is to take over a city that would be tough to take otherwise (and you have units that can enter it immediately), and to prevent population getting halved, which can be a big deal to grow back if it is a medium to large city.