[BALANCE 0.80] Sovereign starting professions
Elemental Forums
When creating a new sovereign, it feels like some starting professions are just always the obvious choices. Would it be possible to tweak the professions a bit to make all of the choices interesting and viable?
Adventurer: (double fame for quests)
The bonus is weak because it is difficult to find a use for so many heroes. I suggest that Adventurer could also affect the XP split as well and allow for the grouping of two heroes in the same army without XP loss. The effects of fame could also be buffed. For example, every 50-100 fame could grant +1 growth in your capital.
Bandit Lord: (two bandit units and ability to convert more)
With the new starting units, the two extra units given by Bandit Lord do not contribute much. Furthermore, the bandit units on the map are rather weak, which makes the skill pale in comparison with other options. The problem could be solved by creating some more powerful bandit units for us to convert.
A thematically appropriate bonus would also be to steal money from other factions by sacrificing bandit unit (e.g. 75 gold for one sacrificed bandit). Bandits just need a new ability for this. Furthermore, Bandit Lord could grant +5 gildar for every looted monster camp, treasure chest etc.
Diplomat: (+30% value in trades and silver tongue)
This ability is ok. In practice additional military strength seems to be much more important for diplomacy with the AI than this ability. However, the Silver Tongue ability is OK and will get better once the AI learns to build better units for us to steal 
.
Hunter: (+50% attack vs beasts)
This is rather weak in comparison with Beast Lord. I would much rather capture beasts than get a +50% attack bonus against them. The ability would be much improved if it also granted a bonus vs Wildlands and Dragons, for example. Alternatively, hunters could be allowed to choose new "favored enemies" like undead, twisted, elementals etc at certain levelups like lvl 7 and lvl 15. This would give the ability some use beyond the early game.
Summoner: (+2 levels to summons and Shadow warg summon ability)
The summoning spells in the mage tree feel pretty good to me, but the Summoner special doesn't contribute much with only 2 bonus levels and the weak Shadow Warg summon. The problem could be solved by buffing the Shadow Warg or giving Summoner a further bonus like +1 movement speed and +25% attack for all summoned units.
Warlord: (-50% to unit wages)
This is a weak bonus because typically unit wages are not the limiting factor in how many units I can get. Rather, the limiting factor is training time and resource cost. If this bonus is meant to make it possible for us to field large armies, make it provide a -25% discount to unit training costs instead. (Some in the first thread disagreed that this is weak, because you can save some gold in the early game. However, in my experience there's many ways to get lots of cash anyway early on. I will really have to build a lot of units to get even 200 gold of use out of this ability in the early game. Maybe it's a difference in playstyle. )
Armorer: (+25% to defense)
This ability is OK.
Beastlord: (Ability to tame beasts)
Awesome ability, probably the best choice. The free beasts really help in leveling up heroes fast and tackling otherwise impossible mobs. Coupled with spell mastery perks like Brilliance means that beasts will rarely resist taming. My favourite combo is to combine Beast Master with the summoning spells from the Mage tree and the free elementals from the Resoln special. This means that I won't have to train any units until late game.
My hope is that all of the abilities could be made as awesome as Beast Lord, rather than nerfing Beast Lord.
General: (+25% to unit experience)
This ability is OK, a balanced bonus. It is a bit boring though, because it doesn't change the way we play. Maybe add some interesting ability?
Noble: (-5% to unrest)
A really weak ability. A -5 to unrest is a weak bonus and also rather boring as it doesn't allow one to do much anything. A -30 to unrest would be more in line with the power of the other abilities and would allow for some different strategies. Alternatively, Noble could substantially reduce the unrest penalty for number of cities. This ability also gave a bonus to prestige in FE; it feels like it hasn't yet been reworked.
Warlock: (+50% spell damage)
A 50% bonus to spell damage is too much and imbalances the whole spell system. With Warlock, damaging spells do OK damage, but coupled with all the spell damage buffs it becomes too much. A +25% bonus to spell damage together with some cool new spell would be far better. For example, how about a spell to buff your spell mastery by 25% for the duration of one combat.
What do you all think?
[Topic moved to a more correct subforum with suggestions from the original thread (https://forums.elementalgame.com/443051/page/1/#3344940) incorporated. Some further ideas here, but some require a lot of changes in the game. I tried to incorporate those that are easier in this post. Sorry for crossposting]
